This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Margaret and I moved to Rock Island in 1960 without even realizing that we were guaranteeing our children to grow up speaking Rock Island English rather than Moline English. It will mark them for life.
With no roads in northern Illinois in the 1830s, Rock Island was settled by Kentuckians and Tennesseans coming up the Mississippi, while Moline, a few years later, was flooded by New Englanders. We Rock Islanders still speak Southern, while those Moliners speak Yankee. We drink soda—or sometimes even sodie—in Rock Island; Moliners drink pop.
In fact, Rock Island, and Interstate 80, mark the northernmost limit of immigration from the south. We call our waterfront the "levee," a southern term. 30 miles north at Clinton, it's the New England "seawall."
It's hard to get a sentence out without the difference showing. In Rock Island, we ask someone, "what did you give for that item"; Proper Moline English asks, "what did you pay?" Our children all loved the teeter-totters in Lincoln Park; across the border, it’s see-saws. "Grits" in Rock Island is simply lumpy corn meal in Moline.
No matter what you outsiders say, you're going to offend one of us. You must either grease the car, or greaze it; that car is either a vehicle or vehicle. It's either roof or roof, creek or crick, angleworm or earthworm; you or you's. You either got to go or gots to go. It's corn bread or johnny cake. It's a glen or a dale. It's Tee-V or T-Vee. Amen or A-men, Gwad or God.
Before you decide which one of us to upset, let me remind you that Moliners pride themselves on being rather snooty—or snotty as we say in Rock Island. They're fun to upset. Our speech is a thorn in their side.
We Rock Islanders are more realistic and down-to-earth. Take sushi, for example; that exotic Japanese dish is far more popular among Moline's elite than among us Rock Islanders, who refer to it by its original name: bait.
Rock Island Lines is supported by grants from the Illinois Humanities Council, the Illinois Arts Council—a state agency—and by Augustana College, Rock Island.
