Joni Scotter is a long way from Marion, Iowa.
“Honey, can you believe all of this?” she asked a companion this week as she strolled to the corner of 47th Street and Broadway in Times Square. “I called my husband just last night and I said, `If I were going to run away, this is where I’d run to.'”
The petite and gray-haired 62-year-old said that since arriving in New York City on Saturday as an alternate delegate from Iowa, she has had visions of that scene that opened “TheMary Tyler Moore Show.”
“All week, I’ve wanted to stand on a corner and throw my hat up in the air. New York is simply awesome.”
To Scotter, New York is a city filled with superlatives.
“It’s got the most diverse people you can find, speaking the most wonderful languages. It’s got the tallest buildings, the loudest sirens, the most congested streets, even the boldest pigeons.”
New York, with 8 million people, is nothing like the town of Marion, population 26,294, where Scotter lives with her husband and their cat, Snowball, in a cozy frame home. And little like Chicago, where Scotter lived in the 1970s, and where her son, an engineer and “semi-Democrat,” now lives.
Those places are far more tame. New York is anything but, and Times Square offers much proof. On an island in the middle of the street, a nearly naked man who calls himself the Naked Cowboy stood akimbo while occasionally strumming his guitar.
He was dressed in nothing more than a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and tight white briefs.
Scotter snapped his photograph. “Honey,” she told a reporter, “I think we’ve seen it all now, don’t you?”
Farther down Broadway, Scotter saw a billboard for the musical “Chicago” and said it reminded her of the Broadway musical “Bombay Dreams,” which the Iowa delegation attended earlier in the week.
“All that dancing and the beautiful costumes took me back to when I was young,” she said lowering her voice as though to convey a secret. “I was in my 20s and I took a little belly dancing class and the girl next to me wore a bra with bells and it jingled as she danced.”
Unfazed by a couple of nearby street preachers holding court on 45th Street, Scotter stopped for a moment for an ever-so-brief demonstration of a fan dance.
As an alternate delegate from Iowa, her duties at the Republican National Convention were light and she had a lot of time on her hands. Aside from a few meetings with notable Republican politicians, she has had few official tasks and extra time to see New York.
The city makes you feel “turned on and tuned in,” every street offering its own theater and set of characters, she said.
She’s walked everywhere, from Midtown to Madison Square Garden and to Greenwich Village, and her purse has been stuffed with the fliers of sidewalk vendors, something you don’t see much of in Marion.
“I make a point of taking the handouts because I think it takes a lot of courage for them to do this in the face of rejection,” said Scotter, who is the Linn County Republican chairwoman. “I don’t want them to get depressed.”
Scotter said New York and the convention have offered quite an experience. She’s dined with senators and at times traveled between events with police escorts.
“This is a wonderful beginning for me to really get back and get going for the Bush ticket,” said Scotter. “Everybody had better watch out when I get back to Iowa because here comes Joni.”
