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This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

The cities around Rock Island have contributed their share of performers to the nation's media—to Hollywood, Broadway, to newspapers, radio and television. But none was more successful or colorful than Harry R. “Tim” Moore.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

"No prophet is without honor, save in his own country," says the Good Book. In the past ten years, Rock Islanders have learned just how true that is.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

You remember the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof? "Tradition," Tevye cries, frightened by the changes the Russian revolution is bringing to his small Jewish community, "without tradition, we are all as shaky fiddlers on the roof."

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

Of the thousand or more island sprinkled on the Upper Mississippi River, only one is fit for that Biblical wise man: the solid limestone bed of Rock Island. Foolish men have their choice of any of the others, from St. Paul to St. Louis, all of them made of slippery silt or sand. As the Sunday School song says, "when the rains come down and the floods come up" . . . watch out foolish man.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. 

As with most rough river towns along the Upper Mississippi, Rock Islanders have had their share of sin. In 1903, Bishop Henry Cosgrove visited Davenport, Iowa, and declared it "the wickedest city for its size in America."

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

When it comes to saints, we Scandinavian Lutherans around Rock Island have a poor track record. We have only one—Saint Olaf—born in 995 A.D. For the last thousand years, it's been slim pickings—not a one. Your Lutheran saint is an endangered species.