These two boosters are Larry and Gene Slattery, two young boys, who say they are too young to be on the fighting line but old enough to do their share on the home front. For months these boys have been gathering and selling scrap, donating chickens to sell at public auction and promoting many other proj- ects and sending the money to the Canteen. Friday the boys paid their first visit to the Canteen and turned in $22.07, the proceeds from two projects. They had started to report how this money was raised when a train arrived. They rushed madly out on the platform and spent the rest of the day watching the service men receive the food, drinks and other favors that their work and money helped provide. Result: The ladies never did learn just how the last money was raised. Telegraph | June 29, 1943 The Slattery boys from Big Springs were much in evidence at the Canteen over the weekend. These two boys have for some time raised money in various ways to help support the Canteen. Friday, at the conclusion of the auction at the North Platte Sales yard, Gene climbed onto the stand and shouted, “I’ll sell the shirt off my back to the highest bidder, money to go to the Canteen.” When the bidding was over, Gene had $40 in cash to turn over to the Canteen. [On] Saturday
he and his brother Larry spent the day working at the Canteen, decked out in new shirts given them by O.H. Thoelecke. As of early 2019, Gene Slattery — still “only” in his mid-80s — split his days between North Platte and a farm near Paxton. In the following excerpts, written nearly 70 years apart, he tells how he devised his “sales pitch.” Telegraph | Dec. 19, 1944 His system is simple. He simply walks into an auction sale of one kind or another and gets the auctioneer to start selling whatever he happens to have for sale that day. The article — puppies or goats — are sold over and over again, and the result: more real money for the Canteen. “It’s my way of helping our fighting men … and besides I have a sister in the WAVEs,” he smiles. “I’ve sold about ten shirts,” he said, “and lost about five out of the deal. … The way they do it at the sale barn in North Platte,” he explained, “is to keep selling the shirt for one dollar to five dollars till everybody has a share in it, then they sell the shirt for keeps. “I sold my shirt for a bond drive once and it sold good,” he said. “I sell them wherever there is someone to buy them. Once I sold my shirt at a ball game, and I sold a box of candy at one of the ball games, too.”
Telegraph | June 26, 1943 Boy Auctions His Shirt for Canteen T he Canteen is a pretty important thing to Gene Slattery of Big Springs, who yesterday presented the group with $36.50 with which to buy supplies. Slattery, … who spent yesterday here attending Chicken Day [by the] Future Farmers of America, made the money for the Canteen by auctioning his chickens and the shirt off his back.
The North Platte Telegraph
58 CANTEEN: AS IT HAPPENED
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