So awful a place that 2 million people show up to party

Two million Knicks fans reveled in lower Manhattan for a ticker-tape parade last Thursday morning as I skedaddled to LaGuardia for country roads to take me home.

What an awful place, huh? Worse even than Chicago, home of the Blues and the Bulls, right? The NYPD had things buttoned down. No problem. If it is such an awful place, as Republicans would have you believe — woke socialist snowflakes — why is Times Square so crowded with people speaking every language in the world? It is so terrible that people are willing to pay $35 for a hotel hamburger. Despite all the stupid people who voted for Mamdani, Trump shows up when the Knicks are winning.

The flight out of Omaha last Tuesday was four hours late. The Uber driver took me to the wrong hotel, so I had to get another Uber to the right hotel on Times Square with the World Cup in full pitch. It was 10 p.m. and the hotel bar had me hostage for the hamburger. The next morning I was supposed to be in the studios of MS Now for Money, Power & Politics with Stephanie Ruhle.

Sirens and neon blinking and a fella can barely sleep. The studios are a hop and skip across 43rd Street. I’m hyper-caffeinated in the green room scared as a country editor out of his league can be. I have done this before, which is why I am wound tighter than an Iowa wallet.

Fellow panelists David Gura of Bloomberg News and David Rhodes of MS Now put me at ease, common folk from North Carolina and Maine respectively.

Under the lights, think fast. Stephanie Ruhle is thinking faster. Trump calls her “a stone-cold killer,” which is a term of respect because she knows the players on Wall Street. Thirty seconds, stand by. Trump could interrupt us with a press gaggle on the Iran deal. What about fertilizer, fuel and food? Explain it in 30 seconds or so, if you please.

Go to a live report on rural health care and Medicaid from rural Missouri. I chime in: Iowa clinics are closing. Where can you deliver a baby these days? You have to drive for hours because that’s where the doctors can make it pay. Keokuk has no hospital. The clinic in Ottumwa closed. Go have your baby in Iowa City. If you need a vascular surgeon, go where the hospital is not on license probation or the surgery center was written up for dirty tools. Hence, an old guy drives five hours because Medicare will allow it.

Ruhle is accustomed to life at warp speed, as are my peers on the panel, as is the hotel valet. They were all incredibly gracious to me. When I looked like a lost hayseed, a self-declared Knicks ambassador in jersey and gold chains who would sell you a phone charger right there on the spot (no thanks) walked me back to my hotel to make sure I was secure for the night. Angels are everywhere if you trust and tip them.

They have the Knicks and trains that run on time. They are not interested in hearing about Ben McCollum of Storm Lake and the Hawkeyes. Isn’t that where Caitlin Clark is from? I gave up on the NBA sometime after Bill Russell hung it up but I impersonated a Knicks fan for a day. “Willis Reed coached at Creighton” barely lifted an eyebrow.

The driver plies the traffic at parade time to get me to LaGuardia. It takes about 42 minutes and $100 to go 12 miles. For an airport, it is relatively humane. Omaha’s airport is a mess but it is almost Iowa. Who thinks about the truck stop at Denison with excitement like I do? The woman in front of me wears a Charlie Kirk shirt whose backside preaches at me. Things are so wrong out here that people sport screeds as fashion. People in the Big Apple appeared to be as happy even with congestion pricing.

The only congestion at the Denison truck stop was her jabbering with some plowboy who just filled up his truck by mortgaging the Back 40. Trump will write him a check before November. They were not watching on Wednesday morning. But I was happy to see them and wait for them to disengage with the cashier. “We’ll talk atcha.” “Okay, then. Give me a call.” “Okay then. Say hi to Daryl.” “You bet.”

And on like that, the three-way Midwestern goodbye. You could have driven to Kiron by now, home of former congressman Steve King, who complained a lot about all those immigrants who make Denison and Storm Lake and New York City go. Those people at the truck stop would give you the shirt off their backs if you really needed it — just not the Charlie Kirk one.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. His latest book, Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World, is available from Ice Cube Press. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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