A series of award-winning stories about our region's traditions, institutions, and people, past and present. Rock Island Lines is written and read by Roald Tweet, Professor Emeritus of English at Augustana College.
The stories in these three-minute modules are rooted in a specific place; a "kidney-shaped limestone island plunked down in the middle of the Mississippi River." It's the logical site for a storyteller. It is from the rich heritage of our region that Tweet spins his histories, biographies, and "stretchers."
Roald has spent much of his life travelling up and down the river, with forays overland, east and west, talking to the people, reading their journals, and enjoying the humor and history of America's heartland. His observations about life around Rock Island strike responsive chords across the region. It's a viewpoint that will enrich and enliven your day.
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Sponsored by
Quad City Bank & Trust
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.The following story about the Mississippi River is not worth telling. Unlike those river events that make the six…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.By the time the famous evangelist, Billy Sunday, came to the city of Rock Island for a six-week crusade in the fall of…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island."Timing is everything," as Reverend James L. Delk could tell you after a summer of revival meetings in the city of Rock…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Before Billy Sunday moved into the big time as the evangelist to America's great urban centers, he practiced his…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Had a Rock Island County man not lost his temper back in 1895, the American cattle industry would have taken a…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.I see that the starving artists are back at the Holiday Inn again for their annual sale, room 211. What would those…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Back in the 1850s, Chicago challenged St. Louis to a duel—a duel that was fought at Rock Island.Chicago was an upstart…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Between 1831 and 1846, the Sangamo Journal in Springfield, Illinois, published seventy-one poems by a poet who signed…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.The communities clustered along the Mississippi around Rock Island have contributed their share of sports heroes to…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Ed Lamp is 97 years old. He still lives by himself in one of a cluster of small homes and cottages along the Rock…