© 2024 WVIK
Listen at 90.3 FM and 98.3 FM in the Quad Cities, 95.9 FM in Dubuque, or on the WVIK app!
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Rock Island Lines
Monday thru Friday 11 AM

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.

Listen below or subscribe on iTunes or RSS.

Sponsored by
Quad City Bank & Trust

Latest Episodes
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.In December of 1858, Jesse Clement, the editor of a fledgling newspaper, the Dubuque Times, set out by steamboat,…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.If only Helen Burkhiser had read Little House on the Prairie when she first began teaching school in 1937, Mankato,…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.In the fall of 1849, some 900 Swedish immigrants gathered in a Swedish church in Chicago to begin the trek across the…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.On May 5th 1868, General John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued General Orders no.…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Those of you who doubt that a straw can actually break a camel's back, or that a kingdom can be lost for want of a nail…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.To C. M. Junkins and his wife from Fairfield, Iowa, keeping a log of the maiden voyage of the steamboat “Morning Star”…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.The devout band of pioneers who founded the town of Galesburg out on the Illinois prairie in 1837 were strict in their…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.When Mary Jane Wiley McCaw arrived in Rock Island in 1843 and settled her eight children in an abandoned schoolhouse on…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.In 1960, when Japanese Emperor Akihito visited Chicago, Mayor Richard J. Daley presented him with a bluegill from the…
  • Community
    This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.As the 1960s drew to a close, the escalating war in Vietnam drew Americans into a seemingly hopeless moral dilemma, but…