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This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

Henry C. Kahl was born poor in a cottage in northwest Davenport, Iowa. He was never a Boy Scout, he was not in school long enough for the deportment side of the report card to instill in him the Protestant work ethic, and there's no indication that he ever read Ben Franklin. It's almost as if Henry knew instinctively that the American dream of "rags to riches" required something more than dreaming.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

"Chippiannock" is a Sauk Indian word meaning "city of the dead," a fit name for the city of Rock Island's first cemetery, ninety-five acres lying on a plateau not far from Saukenuk, where the war chief Black Hawk grew up. The place was originally called Manitou Ridge because of the Indians' belief that here the Great Spirit spread his wings among the hills to keep floods away.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

When Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1826 to study its new citizens, he was amazed at their restlessness—moving an average of once every five years—an average that still holds true today.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

In the Western Cemetery in Orion, Illinois, just south of here, there is a tombstone with the names of Jessie Colton and Bert Richardson.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

The Mississippi is one of those rivers that takes on all comers. Children are easy marks. Just standing them along the shore with a stick to wrinkle the water is all it takes. Fishermen are easy, too. All fishing poles have hooks at both ends, and who pulls in whom is an open question.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

My wife, Margaret, made me promise never ever to use her in these Lines. Of course, I took that to mean she was hoping I would. She's hard to figure out.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

It is hard in our cynical age to imagine the kind of patriotism which made George W. Kinkaid of rural Muscatine, Iowa, leave his wife and plow and march off to the Civil War in 1862.