Once Upon a Town Read Online Free Page B
Author: Bob Greene
helped out at the Canteen all that Christmas vacation, she said, and then went back to Lodgepole to teach. âIt was a town of only about two thousand people. I taught history and English and Latin at the high school, and I coached the high school plays and was the adviser for the Pep Club. Life was so sort of empty in Lodgepole, with no men in town because of the war, that I just took on everything I could do at the school.
âThey had an assembly that first year of the war, and I was looking out at the boys in the auditorium and thinking, these boys are going to end up going to war, and some of them are not going to come back. I tried to keep the tears from flowing down my cheeks.
âI would go to North Platte one weekend a month, to stay with my dad and help out at the Canteen. It was very, very quiet in Lodgepole, with not very much for a young woman my age to do. But I wanted to show an interest in the town that was providing my living, and not have them think that I was just a carpetbag teacher who would leave every weekend. I thought I owed it to them, to the smalltown, to be there, to be in the church on Sunday, to get to know the parents of the boys and girls I taught.
âI guess I looked forward a lot to my one weekend a month visiting my dad and working at the Canteen. For that one weekend a month I would be around the fellows, and I felt I was doing something for the war. It wasnât so lonely.â
One thing she will never forget, she said, was what happened to a woman who volunteered with her at the depotâa woman by the name of Elaine Wright.
âHer husband was a railroad man. He was one of the ones who knew when the troop trains were coming, and who would tip us off. She had a son, who was off in the Navy.
âMost of the older women who worked in the Canteen had sons in the war. It was like a healing thing for them, to work thereâtheir homes felt hollow with their sons away, and I think they sort of built their world around the Canteen.
âI think Elaine Wright was in the Canteen when she got the word that her son had been killed in action. I wasnât there that day, so I donât know for certain that she found out inside the Canteen. But I believe that was so.
âWhat I do know is that after being away for several days because of her sonâs death, when she came back to the Canteen you could hear a pin drop when she walked in. There was silence, and a lot of hugs. And then she said: âIcanât help my son, but I can help someone elseâs son.â And she was there day after day.
âI didnât see any change in her after her sonâs death, except that she was probably even more caring to the boys who came in from the trains. I donât think she ever told any of those boys that she had lost a son.â
LaVon Fairley Kemper told me that after the school year was over in Lodgepole, she moved to North Platte, got a job teaching at Roosevelt Elementary School, and persuaded her father to move out of the rooming house where they had spent that first Canteen Christmas, and to rent with her an apartment that they could share: âIt was a nice place.â And she continued to volunteer at the Canteen.
The Christmas alone with her dad, the sharing of the apartmentâ¦I asked her if her mother had died, and if her dad had been a widower.
She paused for just a second.
âMy mother was a come-and-go mother,â she said. âShe changed men frequently. My father was a quiet, gentle man. I donât know what my mother being that way did to him inside.
âMy motherâ¦I think she would have made a fun sister. But not a mother. When you go off and leave your daughterâ¦she shipped me off to her sister when I was in the second grade. Then again when I was in the sixth grade. She really didnât care. Her fly-by-night life was more important to her than I was. She would justannounce that she was leaving, and that she
âThey had an assembly that first year of the war, and I was looking out at the boys in the auditorium and thinking, these boys are going to end up going to war, and some of them are not going to come back. I tried to keep the tears from flowing down my cheeks.
âI would go to North Platte one weekend a month, to stay with my dad and help out at the Canteen. It was very, very quiet in Lodgepole, with not very much for a young woman my age to do. But I wanted to show an interest in the town that was providing my living, and not have them think that I was just a carpetbag teacher who would leave every weekend. I thought I owed it to them, to the smalltown, to be there, to be in the church on Sunday, to get to know the parents of the boys and girls I taught.
âI guess I looked forward a lot to my one weekend a month visiting my dad and working at the Canteen. For that one weekend a month I would be around the fellows, and I felt I was doing something for the war. It wasnât so lonely.â
One thing she will never forget, she said, was what happened to a woman who volunteered with her at the depotâa woman by the name of Elaine Wright.
âHer husband was a railroad man. He was one of the ones who knew when the troop trains were coming, and who would tip us off. She had a son, who was off in the Navy.
âMost of the older women who worked in the Canteen had sons in the war. It was like a healing thing for them, to work thereâtheir homes felt hollow with their sons away, and I think they sort of built their world around the Canteen.
âI think Elaine Wright was in the Canteen when she got the word that her son had been killed in action. I wasnât there that day, so I donât know for certain that she found out inside the Canteen. But I believe that was so.
âWhat I do know is that after being away for several days because of her sonâs death, when she came back to the Canteen you could hear a pin drop when she walked in. There was silence, and a lot of hugs. And then she said: âIcanât help my son, but I can help someone elseâs son.â And she was there day after day.
âI didnât see any change in her after her sonâs death, except that she was probably even more caring to the boys who came in from the trains. I donât think she ever told any of those boys that she had lost a son.â
LaVon Fairley Kemper told me that after the school year was over in Lodgepole, she moved to North Platte, got a job teaching at Roosevelt Elementary School, and persuaded her father to move out of the rooming house where they had spent that first Canteen Christmas, and to rent with her an apartment that they could share: âIt was a nice place.â And she continued to volunteer at the Canteen.
The Christmas alone with her dad, the sharing of the apartmentâ¦I asked her if her mother had died, and if her dad had been a widower.
She paused for just a second.
âMy mother was a come-and-go mother,â she said. âShe changed men frequently. My father was a quiet, gentle man. I donât know what my mother being that way did to him inside.
âMy motherâ¦I think she would have made a fun sister. But not a mother. When you go off and leave your daughterâ¦she shipped me off to her sister when I was in the second grade. Then again when I was in the sixth grade. She really didnât care. Her fly-by-night life was more important to her than I was. She would justannounce that she was leaving, and that she
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