Rock Island Lines Podcast

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.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Here's a short course on the history of work in America. In about 1884, John F. Boepple immigrated from Germany to Muscatine, Iowa. One day he stopped along the Mississippi to watch a dredge boat in operation. The clam shells in the dredged material excited him. He had been a button maker in Germany, and these Mississippi shells were perfect for pearl buttons.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. In August of 1863, Union troops arrived on Rock Island to build a prison camp for Confederate prisoners. Beginning with 468 prisoners captured in the Battle of Lookout Mountain, who arrived in December of 1863, the Rock Island Barracks eventually housed more than twelve thousand Confederates. In Gone With the Wind , Margaret Mitchell called it "the Andersonville of the North."

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Muscatine, Iowa, a few miles down the Mississippi from here, must have made an impact on George Grey Barnard. Barnard lived there briefly as a teenager from 1877 to 1885 before going on to become an internationally acclaimed sculptor. Late in life, with his work in many museums, Barnard claimed that his inspiration came from Muscatine.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Before you pick up the phone and call in, trust me on this one. No steamboat on the Upper Mississippi River ever had a calliope. On the river, it was always pronounced cally-ope. Steamboat men had minds of their own, and seldom took direction from people on land.

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. The Mississippi River and history have this in common: neither one always goes where you want it to go. That is why a young man who set out in 1848 to paint the most American painting in the world ended up instead with a book of lithographs of the Mississippi River printed in German.