1. Mr. Ukulele Loses His Aloha Again

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    September 11, 2019 by admin

    On an overcast Tuesday, I set up in Bethesda Fountain and immediately snagged a man and 2 women from Lebanon and Dubai.  The man informed me he’d been to Hawaii but had never hula-ed.  One of the women said, “It’s easy, just pretend you are the ocean waves.”

    “Exactly.”  I took them through 2 verses of “The Hukilau Song.”  During the second verse, one of the women broke through the constraints of the traditional hula, and, arms flailing, pranced around the others with abandon.  When they’d returned the leis, I looked down to find a fiver in my case.

    A man off the bench gave me a dollar.

    Then I heard the accordion, and my aloha spirit was replaced with a low-level rage.  It was the Italian man who’d cursed me out last time I’d asked him not to set up so close to me.  ( http://www.mrukulele.com/?p=1092(opens in a new tab)). Before I had a chance to consider what, if anything, to do about him, I was in his face.  “We’ve talked about this before,” I began.  “When you see me playing, you move somewhere else.  You don’t set up on top of me.”

    He sputtered something in Italian.  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”  More Italian.  I turned my back and returned to my spot.  I strummed out some chord patterns until I regained my composure, then began singing “Making Love Ukulele Style.”  By the time I finished, the accordionist was gone.

    Two little kids came off the bench, each holding a handful of coins to toss in my case.  Neither wanted to hula.

    The rain clouds churned overhead.  A few drops hit the ground, but the sun soon burned through; all those who had stood up to leave sat down again.

    A 50-something woman came forward with a dollar.  “Why don’t you play something Hawaiian?”

    “Are you from Hawaii?”

    “Yes.”

    I reached for a lei.  “How about you hula to ‘The Hukilau Song?’”

    “No, no, no,” she said, taking a few steps backward.  “I don’t dance.”

    At the end of my set, I stuffed $8.06 in my pocket.  On my way out of the park I saw the Italian accordionist, sitting on his stool, wheezing out the “Theme from the Godfather.”

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  2. The Nick of Time

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    September 10, 2019 by admin

    The signs of the approaching autumn are multiplying:  red crabapples are ripening on Central Park West; orange hips cover the rose bushes; spiky red dogwood fruit hangs above the button-seller’s head.  The gomphrena continues to dominate behind the benches, plush purple buttons slowly swaying on tall stems.  The only real color in Strawberry Fields comes from the pink dog roses across the path from the peace-loving peoples’ plaque.  Next year’s magnolia flowers are locked up in 2-inch buds that will survive the winter.

    The Italian accordion player and the jazz violinist had Bethesda Fountain to themselves; I moved on to the maple.  A Croatian family on bicycles stopped to ask directions to the Bow Bridge.  The 20-something daughter interpreted for her parents.  “My father wants to know where you are from,” she said.

    “Here.  New York.”

    “Your father then”

    “New Jersey.”

    “His father?”

    “Eastern Europe.  Near Kiev, which was part of tsarist Russia.”

    “My father is from Ukraine,” she said.

    The father gave me a dollar.  “I love New York,” he said.

    A Japanese man carrying a bass viol on his back stopped to listen to me.  Between songs he asked me about my repertoire; as it turned out, he too played the old songs.  By another stroke of luck, we were in tune.  We played “Sunny Side of the Street” and “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” He was a busker in Tokyo and had come to the U.S. for the Detroit jazz festival.  The bass was a rental.

    After our 2 numbers, I directed him to the fountain and to other busking locations.  Resuming my solo act, I played for another 30 minutes and only received another dollar from a passerby.

    “There’re lots of people at the fountain,” the big bubble man told me on his way to the boathouse bathrooms to pee and refill his bucket.

    Taking his advice, I moved my gear.  The change of venue did nothing to change my luck.  It was looking again as if I wouldn’t make carfare.  As I started my final number, “Little Grass Shack,” a 40-something woman walked by and put me over with a dollar.

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  3. Return after Labor Day

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    September 5, 2019 by admin

    The park, frankly, looked unkempt.  There were stands of Michaelmas daisies slowly browning in the sun.  A bud-bearing branch of the wood anemone was snapped and hanging down, and a light breeze scattered fallen leaves across the asphalt paths and into the gutters.  A large clump of jewelweed, yellow-orange flowers already wilted, should have been pulled up weeks ago.  A new pest, pokeweed, has growth through the dog roses and started to produce its toxic purple berries.  If the Central Park Conservancy doesn’t attend to the pokeweed now, in future they will attend to nothing else.

    A solo amplified guitarist picked out a Spanish classic; either he just began his set or no one was tipping today.  I moved on, to the Norway Maple, where the old Ukrainian caricaturist was setting up his easel, chairs, pads, paints and signage – this took him close to an hour.  The young Ukrainian caricaturist, with his wife, came much later, set up quickly, and was leaning against the fence, smoking a cigarette, when a man came by and put a dollar in my case.

    Two teen-aged boys let their families head for the boathouse bathrooms, preferring to stand in the shade of the maple with me.  When their families returned, one of the boys dug a dollar coin out of his jeans.  “You’re good,” he said, tossing it to me.

    Three Spanish girls reluctantly did a hula.  It’s not as if I forced them.  After 1 verse of “The Hukilau Song,” I gathered my leis and set them free.  One of them gave me a quarter.  Shortly afterward, a man leaned over my case and carefully stacked a quarter, dime, nickel and 5 pennies.

    A tall woman, walking by, danced the hula to the delight of her friends.  The caricaturist’s wife observed, “Everyone is happy when it’s free.”

    A man, walking quickly, tossed me a dollar.  I only saw him as he zoomed down the path.  “Thanks,” I called after him.  He waved acknowledgement without turning around.

    And then, no one.  For the next 10 minutes, not a single person passed by.

    The old man was sleeping; the younger smoked another cigarette.  “This is boring,” said the wife.  “Let’s go to Atlantic City.”

    “You tell me this in the morning, not now,” he said.

    I played “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” to the trees and sky, then noticed very near me a young dark-haired girl of 14 or so,  listening intently.  I sang the rest of the song to her.  “Do you know that song?”

    She shook her head.

    “But you play the uke?”

    “A little.”  I handed her the uke and she strummed a basic chord pattern.  Her adult relatives showed up, so she handed the uke back.

    “Have you got time for a hula dance?”

    She did.  I put a lei around her neck. Turned toward her so she could follow my fingering, I played, “I Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone.”   At this point grandpa got into the act, dancing a hula of his own.  At the end of the dance, he waved the parents away, as if to say, “I got this,” and laid down a fiver. It was a satisfying way to end my set.

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