This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
What follows is a second-hand Rock Island story; I was not there. It may be one of those stories that are true rather than factual. It is a story about how people find their places in a community, how one person becomes the man who runs the 4th of July parade and another becomes the lady who finally told off the banker.
One day in the early 1940s, an elderly stranger appeared on the streets of downtown Davenport, Iowa, dressed in bright yellow. His shirt was yellow, and so were his pants—and his tie, and his coat, and his socks. A sunbeam clown, one of those harlequins whose mere appearance changes the mood of those who see him.
From then on, our harlequin walked often, proud and alone through Davenport in different colors. One day it would be red: red pants, red shirt, tie, coat, socks. Then orange. Then green.
But never, never blue. It turned out that he had been a railroad conductor. Every working day it was the same crisp dark navy-blue uniform, up and down the aisle, a blue arm punching tickets, calling out stations. Blue Monday, blue Tuesday, blue all week. That blue uniform became over the years a symbol for all that he detested about his job—the waiting, the repetitiveness, above all the facelessness of the job, for what passenger or patron ever notices the person inside the uniform? If he had put on a fake nose someday, would anyone have noticed?
So, he hatched a plan to get even when he took that dark uniform off for the last time and retired. He would show them. He would become somebody people noticed. And so, the walking rainbow of bright colors—yellows, oranges, greens, reds—but never, never, never blue.
The harlequin's colors faded eventually, and the cloth grew shabby and full of holes. More and more, people looked the other way.
Toward the end the colors began to bleed. Green pants appeared with the yellow shirt, and the orange tie with the red socks.
Yet even when the rainbow had all but melted to a gray fog, there were still traces of the yellows, greens, and pale reds—but never, never blue.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
