This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Memo: To the two tourists who lost their way last Thursday on the way to one of the gambling boats and found themselves standing on the levee right by the real Mississippi River, holding their noses.
Of course, the river smells. In the slack water back of some of the islands, it even stinks, an unmistakable odiferous Mississippi stench. We Rock Islanders are the first to admit that the Mississippi river doesn't shave its legs or armpits or scrub its islands regularly or shampoo daily. It's a river too busy for toiletries or coffee breaks. It relieves itself wherever it happens to be at the moment. And so, it smells.
The Mississippi’s particular aroma is a blend more intricate than anything Calvin Klein put into Obsession: a touch of fish and clams, alive and dead, drowned worms, decaying leaves from maples, oaks, and willows, old thick mud stirred up from the bottom by towboats, carefully selected silt from some of the best Iowa and Wisconsin farms, a hint of iron ores and tannic acid from northern Minnesota, with other ingredients in season.
We Rock Islanders love the Mississippi's heavy dank invigorating smell of earth and water. We find it character building.
I'm sorry you two tourists couldn't stand the smell, and soon found your way back to the casino, and the perfume of poker chips and slot machine tokens.
Memo number two: To Calvin Klein, If you could get over your Obsession, and manage to blend the Mississippi River into an eau de cologne, you might not do much for the world of romance, but you would bring back to Rock Island those pilgrims now scattered across the world who grew up as children along the river and played with boats or fished. A little spritz behind the ears, and they would soon be back to stand by the Mississippi, to smell the river and be reminded of what it's like to be alive—the strong, heady stink of what the Medieval world called "nature naturing."
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
