1. Hulapalooza

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    June 29, 2017 by admin

    After more than a week, I made my way back to the park.  At the entrance, the pink begonias and a swath of green and white lamium were doing well, and, behind the benches, the workhorse roses, pink and red, provided great color.  At the Imagine Mosaic, one of the platoon guitarists was between songs.  He looked up as I passed.  “I got the same shirt,” he said.

     

    “It’s the original Tom Selleck, Magnum PI,” I said.

     

    Under the gaze of Daniel Webster, another cloud of spent clover rose above the lawn.

     

    Center stage was mine.  I’d barely tuned up when 2 tweens stopped to hula.  In quick succession, another girl of about the same age, from DC, wanted to hula, then 2 cousins from Idaho took a turn.  I had $5 in my case before I came home from the hukilau, and started my set in earnest.

     

    A teenage girl walked by and dropped 60 cents.  She turned out to be one of the few today who did not hula.

     

    A girl of 9 or 10 showed some interest, but when I asked if she had time for a hula, she shook her head no, only to return a short while later to say, “I changed my mind.”  She was from Puerto Rico.  She danced with a rocking motion, laughing all the while her mom took pictures.  For a change of pace, I sang “My Little Grass Shack.”  Mom contributed $2.

     

    A young teen danced and walked away.  She came back with 4 quarters.

     

    A group of 10 kids talked each other into a group dance.  I tore open a new package of leis to accommodate them.  One of them, a slender girl named Hallie, was pushed to the front, where she led the group in a sinewy interpretation of “The Hukilau Song.”  She said she was from Colombia.  “The country, not South Carolina.”  Another few dollars floated into my case.

     

    A Russian man and his family were enchanted by my solar-powered hula girls.  “How much?”

     

    “Five dollars,” I told him.  He started to bargain, but I held firm, and showed him the plastic shell that would protect it in his luggage.  He picked up the pink doll, which was broken.  I took it from him and showed his son how it worked, while the man contemplated the green or the yellow.  By this time, the enchantment had faded.  “If you really like these, you can probably get 2 for 5 on the internet,” I told him.

     

    He laughed and said, “Thank you for your honesty.”  They walked off, but the man soon came back with a dollar for my time.

     

    A young girl sat at the edge of the fountain with a book.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    “Maybe later,” she said, “with my sister.”

     

    A girl from Nashville went to the hukilau, and a short time later 2 more dancers from Nashville did the same.

     

    A Mexican boy danced at his mother’s insistence.  Behind her camera, she swayed to the music, while the boy rather woodenly flapped his arms.

     

    In addition to the saffron-robed begging Buddhists, who shove prayer flags in peoples’ hands, Bethesda Fountain is also home to teenage boys selling candy for playground equipment.  One of them bopped up to me and said, “I got lots of change for you, bud.”

     

    Five girls from Staten Island stopped to hula.  “What fun,” one of them said, taking a single from her purse.  Perhaps some of the others had also made donations, but I didn’t notice, because the young girl who had been reading returned with her sister.  Each of them had a dollar for me.

     

    Toward the end of my set, the sisters came back with their mom.  “I didn’t get a chance to take a picture,” she said.  I put leis back on them and posed for the shot, after which mom put another dollar in my case.

     

    I counted $25.02, my second best take of the season.  Judged by the number of hulas danced, however, it was an all-time high.

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  2. The Summer Solstice

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    June 21, 2017 by admin

    The air was thick with the scent of summer roses.  I had a Proustian recall of my boyhood home where, in summer, my mother kept the living room supplied with fresh-cut roses from the back yard.  Summers then consisted of sticky drives to swim clubs and boarding house rentals at the Jersey shore with my cousins.  At 9, I went to a YMCA camp for the summer, then to Boy Scout camp.  There, at Ken-Etiwa-Pec, I picked up a uke for the time.

     

    “Hi, cowboy,” I said.  He was walking away as I approached.  Last summer, the cowboy and I both played on the same stage, and had reached a détente.  He left around 12:30; I set up when he was gone.  The other buskers were in place, the Boyd Family and Friends, the Big Bubble Man, and, new to the mix, an all green Lady Liberty on stilts.

     

    Three teenagers came by.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    “Does it cost anything?”

     

    “Nooo,” I sang out.  One of the girls put on a lei and hula-ed to the hukilau.  Her friends videoed the dance, then each put a dollar in my case.

     

    A well-dressed woman of a certain age came by a little later and added another dollar.

     

    A toddler toddled up to me, her dad close behind.  She was coy, but I had a special baby lei for her and that did the trick.  At the end of the dance, a crowd of people, who had gathered to see the cute hula girl, applauded.  Dad gave me a fiver.

     

    The mood of the park deteriorated after that.  First, a woman showed up and started loudly digging refundable cans out of the trash.  Later, the bearded, bare-chested homeless man climbed into the fountain and started his search for silver.  At the same time, a kid of 8 or 9 also climbed into the water, as if it were a swimming pool.  He had adult supervision, a man with a bike, who exerted no control.  The kid collected copper, building stacks of pennies on the fountain’s inside ledge.  Resisting an impulse to engage with the man, or yell at the kid, I played, distracted, through to the end of my set.

     

    I had $8.  As I left, I walked around to the homeless man and handed him a single.

     

    “Thanks, bud.”

     

    Aloha.

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  3. After the Heat and Rain

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    June 16, 2017 by admin

    At the entrance to the park, the stellas formed a golden carpet leading to a profusion of pink dog roses behind the benches.  At Strawberry Fields, the ferns fought with red-leafed corral bells.  Daniel Webster oversaw a newly mown lawn, with clouds of incipient clover blossoms rising to the sun.  After the heat and rain of the past few days, the park was lushly fecund.

     

    A buck from a man and wife walking by got me started.

     

    “Has this group got time for a hula dance today?”  There were 8 teenage girls in blue tees from a high school in NJ.  The leader, similarly dressed, was enthusiastic.  They had come to the park to smell the roses, she told me.  “And to hula.”

     

    They danced to 2 verses of “The Hukilau Song,” then walked off.  I saw them stop at the bottom of the path, where they smelled the roses, of course.

     

    While singing “I Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone,” I looked to my left and saw a toddler bearing down on me; her dad proudly followed.  “Are you my little hula girl?”

     

    “I think she is,” said dad.  I gave her the baby lei, and off she went to an arm-waving, foot-stomping, body-turning hukilau.

     

    A young woman, who had been watching from the bench, came up with a dollar in her hand.  She was interested in ukes, and peppered me with questions about tuning, string types and the various sizes ukes came in.

     

    A stylish woman photographed me from afar.  When the song ended, she smiled and walked away, but she soon came back with a dollar.

     

    At the end of my set, I sat down to count my take:  $5.  A young teen, who had been sitting near the water with her family, came running to make it $6.

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