I can hear Colin’s amped guitar from Cherry Hill.  He is playing Al Green’s “I’m So in Love with You” (1972).  As I approach, he says, “Ten minutes.”

I’d just started to set up when I heard him lament, “I’ve popped a string.”  His 10 minutes was now.

Half way through my first 30 minutes, a man started filming “Ukulele Lady.”  I gave him a full-face rendition, after which he flashed the thumbs-up.  “Ok,” I said to him.  “You’ve got yours, now it’s your turn to do a hula dance for me.”

“No, no,” he said.

“It’s only fair,” I said, but nevertheless he walked away.  At my first break, my case was empty.

Things picked up after that.  A photographer gave me $2 for a picture.  A woman off the bench added another dollar.  Two Chinese teenagers, having listened to me sing during their lunch, dropped over a dollar in change as they left the fountain area.

An Israeli man, his son on his shoulders, stopped to listen.  The little boy did not want to hula, but his mother did.  His father, unable to convince his son to get down, put a lei on and joined in anyway, for another $2.

A young couple from Los Angeles stopped to hula, then walked away. 

Dancing toward me from the bench came a giant of a man, 6-4 or better and 350 pounds.  He took a lei and hula-ed gracefully, his eyes cast skyward, as he swayed to “The Hukilau Song.”  I started to introduce the second verse; he interrupted, “I know, I know.”  At the lyric, “kanes and wahinis sing a song about love,” he covered his heart with a soulful gesture and brought his dance to an end.  He pulled 2 bills out of his wallet, a single and a fiver, then gave me the single.

A 20-something couple from Toronto threw a dollar coin in my case.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”  They did, after which the woman reached into her purse and tossed me another dollar coin.

After my 90 minutes, I counted out $9.31, plus a coin that appears to be a 5 Turkish kuru piece, .05 lira, worth less than a penny.