Brooms and Antlers

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Even the Mississippi River seems to know when it has crossed the Mason-Dixon line. The Upper Mississippi is a Yankee protestant-work-ethic river, always busy. The lower Mississippi below Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio comes in, is a grander, more leisurely affair—a world of colonels and judges and mint juleps. No wonder that Currier and Ives chose to immortalize the steamboat race between the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee rather than between the small, plain packet boats north of St. Louis.

Other Episodes

December 27, 2023

The Special Edition

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

Listen · 3:00

December 26, 2023

Don Wooten

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

Listen · 3:12

December 22, 2023

Quad City Symphony

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

Listen · 3:16

WVIK - Quad Cities NPR

WVIK, Quad Cities NPR, provides news and classical music 24-hours-a-day to the Quad Cities and surrounding community in northwestern Illinois and eastern Iowa. WVIK is a public service of Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Our signal is broadcast at 90.3 FM in the Quad Cities area, at 95.9 FM in Dubuque, Iowa (including a small part of southwestern Wisconsin), and around the globe at WVIK.org.

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