This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. One of the oddest projects ever to reach the Mississippi River was the seventy-five-mile Illinois and Mississippi Canal connecting Rock Island via thirty-three locks with the Illinois River at Hennepin, and from there to Lake Michigan. Completed in 1907, it was too little and too late to save the dwindling steamboat traffic on the Mississippi. It was seldom used, reaching a peak of one six-hundredth of its capacity in 1929 and closing for good in 1951.

This is Roald Tweet in Rock Island. No community in America has arrived until it's had its bank robbery. Preferably, it should be by Jesse James, Dillinger, or Bonnie and Clyde, but in a pinch, just about any robbers will do.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. A local newspaper columnist, noticing the public's general indifference to the less fortunate, frequently asks, "Is anybody there; does anybody care?"

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Nearly all of us spend our lives working. Many of us are hired to fill jobs, some are offered positions; a very few are called.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. As romantic and as mythic as the Mississippi River is, the names of towns sprinkled along its banks are fairly prosaic.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Fortunately for Rock Island, there are some men who cannot bring themselves to tell each other they are sorry, in so many words. They have to do it roundabout.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Like most other idealistic young men and women, new ministers go out to their calls with visions of being good shepherds to their flocks. That was certainly true of the Reverend Michael Hummer who came to organize and pastor a Presbyterian church in Iowa City, Iowa, in 1840.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. There it is, on the first page of the scrapbook. It may be a Congregational church in Geneseo, or a Baptist church in Burlington, or the Presbyterians in Maquoketa, the small clapboard white rectangle of a building is almost identical.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. During the Golden Age of steam boating on the Upper Mississippi River, no job was more critical than that performed by the rapids pilots who were brought on board to take boats safely up or down the treacherous fourteen miles of Rock Island Rapids between LeClaire and Davenport, Iowa. The skill and knowledge of these forty to fifty men has become legendary.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Have you ever noticed how we always measure the speed of an animal against a horse? A horse can outrun a human, but a cheetah can outrun a horse, and so on. In 1836, a steamboat making a run from Rock Island upriver to Galena found out where it belonged on this scale.