1. The Gift of Today

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    November 3, 2018 by admin

    Yesterday was to have been my farewell tour, but fortune made me the gift of today.  Seventy degrees in Central Park, the people wore their coats around their waists, and wondered, with me, at such a Day of the Dead.  In Strawberry Fields, the chestnut tree was bare; I walked around it, kicking up the leaves to reveal what few nuts remained.  Those I found had blackened shells, and the nuts inside were white and juicy.  The sister chestnut, in a stand of trees across the path, still had leaves and stood proud among the showy maples and oaks.

     

    Carole started me off with a dollar.  I do believe she also gave me a dollar back in April, the first day of the season.

     

    A man from the crowd tossed in a buck.  There were lots of people enjoying the park.  A man from the bench added a dollar, then another, a woman, a kid.  “You have a good voice,” someone told me.  The compliment, rarely heard, felt true today.  My baritone voice and my low-G tenor ukulele seemed especially tuneful, and in tune.

     

    “You’re singing my favorite repertoire,” said a 40-something woman with a single in her hand.  A man dumped a handful of change in my case.  I’d lost track of who gave what.  I played for an hour without a break:  Mr. Ukulele had found his bliss.

     

    On his way out of Bethesda Fountain, a distinguished man stopped pushing his bicycle toward the Boat House, turned and started taking pictures of me.  His equally distinguished wife stood beside him, with her bike.  When he put the camera down, they both stayed until the end of the song.  They walked off, as I’d expected they would, but then the man stopped, gave the bike to his wife and strode toward me.  He laid a dollar in my case.  “You’re a lucky man,” he said.  I first thought he was referring to the dollar, that I was lucky to get it, but of course he meant this enchanted day, this beautiful space, the blissful aloha of this moment.

     

    A little girl came running from the other side of the fountain and gently lay a coin in my case.  I learned later that it was 1 Albanian lek, which everyone knows is equal to 100 qindarkas.

     

    A young Asian woman, with short black hair and the face of a geisha, sat through several songs.  She appeared to be sketching, or writing in a journal.  She gave me 2 tightly folded singles, then took lots of pictures.

     

    At the end of my set, I sat down to count $19, plus 1 lek.  Folded into the geisha’s bills was the following note:

     

    Your song brought me

    a happy moment.  🙂 ♥

    Thanks for singing such

    great songs, nice grandpa

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  2. Halloween: The Last Day of the Season?

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    November 1, 2018 by admin

    Despite the sub-60-degree temperature, I sallied forth for what I expected to be my last busking of the year.  It had been 4 weeks since my last outing.  Along Central Park West, Michaelmas daisies turned brown amid the begonias, which endured.  The rose bushes sported orange hips; ageratum and celosia have so far survived.

     

    I greeted Randy at the Imagine Mosaic.  He opined about the disappearance of Canadians from the park.  “I love those guys, they’re the best tippers,” he said, then went on to blame Trump for his diminished receipts.

     

    The wood anemone along the path was resplendent with flowers.  At the statue of Daniel Webster, the preparation for the NYC Marathon was underway, mostly in the form of tall chain link fencing.  At the top of the stairs at Bethesda Fountain, I stopped to marvel at the beauty of the fall colors reflected in the lake.

     

    I greeted Dominick, the big bubble man, who commented on my absence.  He told me he’d purchased a warm costume to help him through the winter.  Unlike last year, he had a place to stay when it got cold.

     

    A tall young woman rode up on her bike.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    “I wouldn’t say no.”  She was from Amsterdam.  After a few moments chatting about her country, where my wife and I have visited many times, I put a lei around her neck and sent her dancing off to the hukilau.  At the end, she gave me back the lei (“for the next tourist”), and asked how much for the solar-powered hula girl.  I let one go for a fiver.

     

    Another young woman walked by and asked if she could take my picture.  She would not hula, but did give me a dollar.

     

    A strapping young man from Australia complimented me on my music and dropped a handful of change in my case.  Among the nickels and dimes were at least 10 quarters.  A young woman walked by and added her single.

     

    A woman of a certain age stopped while I played “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love.”  “I didn’t give to the saxophone player, he was bad,” she told me.  “You, on the other hand….”   She finished her sentence by waving a dollar at me and placing it in my case.

     

    A young man got up from the bench and tossed in a buck.

     

    It was Halloween.  Some costumes that wandered by were complex and imaginative, but the costume du jour seemed to be black ears mounted on a headband, easy enough to remove if one had to be professional.  Then a woman walked by with a lampshade on her head.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    She did, while her friend photographed her.  She gave me a dollar, immediately followed by another dollar from a woman who’d been listening from the bench.

     

    A man came close with his camera and captured my finale, “Little Grass Shack.”  He put some change in my case before he started, then put in some more when I’d finished.

     

    With $13.91 in my pocket, I left the park, thinking this was most certainly my last day of the season.

     

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