There is probably no book that sets forth Thanksgiving as well as Bob Greene’s true story of the American spirit, Once Upon a Town.

As he puts it, he was not sure he would find it on a long hot drive across Nebraska.  He was seeking: the best America there ever was or at least whatever might be left of it.

There was purpose to his search.  Once upon a time not so very long ago, something happened in this one little town, especially on hot days like this one, that now sounds just about impossible.  Something happened that has all but been forgotten.  What happened in this town speaks of an America that we once had or at least our parents did and their parents before them.

We are always talking about the future, what we would like the country to be like some elusive answer shrouded in fog.  If only someone would find it?

But maybe the answer is not somewhere in the distance; maybe the answer is one we already had, but somehow threw away.

Maybe, as we as a nation try to make things better, the answer is somewhere locked away waiting to be retrieved.

North Platte, Nebraska, is about as isolated as a small town can be.  It’s in the middle of the country.   It is hours by car from Omaha and Lincoln.  Few people venture there unless they live there or have family.  Western Nebraska is like rural Oklahoma.  Dotted with small towns of a few hundred people or more.

Before the air age, the Union Pacific railroad’s main line ran through North Platte.  In 1941, the town had 12,000 residents.  When World War II began those Union Pacific cars carried a precious cargo – the boys of the United States, on their way to battle.

The trains rolled into North Platte day and night.  A local resident came up with an idea:  why not meet the trains coming through, to offer the servicemen a little affection and support?  Many of the soldiers had never been away from home.  They were out in the empty expanses of prairie filled with thoughts and loneliness and fear.  Why not provide them with warmth and the feeling of being loved?

On Christmas Day 1941, it began.  A troop train rolled in and the surprised troops were greeted by residents with welcome words, smiles and baskets of foods and treats.  There would be fried chicken, hard-boiled eggs, milk, juice, sandwiches, apples and Bibles.  Look, Life and Readers Digest were there, too.

What happened for the next four years was nothing short of amazing – some would say a miracle.  Every day of the year from 5 a.m. until the last troop train passed through, the canteen at the depot was open. Trains might only stop for 10 minutes to draw water.  The people of North Platte made these minutes count.

Slowly, word spread on what awaited you in North Platte.  Each day of the war – every day of the war an average of 3,000 to 5,000 military personnel came through North Platte.  Toward the end of the war, the numbers grew to 8,000 a day, on as many as 23 separate troop trains.  But during the war, six million soldiers passed through North Platte and were greeted at the train station that had been turned into a canteen.  All the food, all the services, all the hours of work were volunteered by private citizens and businesses.  120 separate communities participated.

As every train was greeted, every man was welcomed.  It was a love story.  The love story between a country and its sons.  And it’s long gone.

This wonderful book is filled with the thank you letters of so many people.  At this Thanksgiving, we have so much to be thankful for. 

Let us step back in time and read what Mrs. Ethel Koncilek of New York wrote to a North Platte volunteer Mrs. C.S. Rabb.  “At a stop in Nebraska several years ago, a dusty, hungry, travel weary teen-age Air Cadet stepped of the train to relax.  He had started in Nevada for home, which he was to visit for the first time in eleven months.  He was still a thousand miles away.  You know what happened at the brief stop in Nebraska.  Please accept this letter as a token of our appreciation for your kindness to our boy.  May God bless you and your loved ones.  This world may still be a better place in which to live as long as charity such as yours remains in the hearts of men.”