This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Turkeys are silly birds. The difference in intelligence between a live turkey and that upside-down one on your Thanksgiving table is hardly measurable. It is almost mandatory, therefore, that a brand of poetry named after this bird be equally lacking in sense.As far back as anyone living can remember, Davenport children have celebrated Thanksgiving with two-line doggerel poems called “Turkey Notes.” The rules are simple. Each line must begin with the word "turkey" and the lines must rhyme. For example: "Turkey see, turkey do / Turkey says I love you."
School children write Turkey Notes on small squares of paper, one note for each of the other children in class. By the time a fourth grader has written 22 turkey notes, both rhyme and reason tend to wear thin. Number twenty-eight might read "Turkey blue, turkey red, / Turkey says 'Go make your bed'." And number thirty-one: "Turkey gray, turkey navy / Turkey says 'Go stir the gravy.'"
The notes are rolled up into tubes, wrapped in colored tissue, fringed at each end, tied with yarn, and distributed to each desk.
No one knows how Turkey Notes originated. No one has stepped forward to accept responsibility. Some believe the practice was introduced by the wave of Germans who immigrated to Davenport from Schleswig-Holstein after 1848.
Fortunately for the culture of the United States, the Turkey Note has never spread beyond the city limits of Davenport. What if they had infected our culture like pet rocks and hula hoops. Suppose Hallmark Cards had found out about Turkey Notes and used them to inject some life into the anemic Thanksgiving card market.
It would only be a matter of time before their influence would show up everywhere: on car ads, talk shows, political campaigns, perhaps even a modern translation of the New Testament.
Once a person gets turkey notes in his head, it's hard to think straight. It's like chopsticks on the piano. I can see that now. "Turkey gobbles, turkey whines, / Turkey writes Rock Island Lines."
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
