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... until midnight, the North Platte Canteen opened its doors to the troops whose trains pulled into town—providing free egg salad sandwiches, apples, candy and homemade cakes; magazines, Bibles and music; encouragement and friendship. ... What a story that is, and what a dire shame that Bob Greene does not quite find a way to tell it in his new book, Once Upon a Town. ... "I arrived in town, and went to the place where the train depot had stood, and there was nothing there," he reports, about the station that was demolished in 1973. ... For example, after one former volunteer briefly recalls for Greene the first Christmas at the Canteen ("We carried the bushel baskets out to the train, gave the men the apples and the candy, wished them Merry Christmas, and the train left"), she turns her memories upon her own "fly-by-night" mother, who had no presence at the Canteen. ...
What really thwarts Once Upon a Town is Greenes decision to tell the tale not as a historian might—using the tools of synthesis and imaginative reconstruction—but as a journalist overly enamored with so many seemingly unedited transcripts.
Approximate Word count = 905
Approximate Pages = 3.6
(250 words per page double spaced)
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