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.