This time of year, every day above 60 degrees is a gift.  Judging by the size of the crowds in Central Park on Thursday, I was not the only one who felt that way.

Someone at Bethesda Fountain has an amp turned way up.  At the top of the stairs I see a dense throng across the plaza where Colin, the cowboy, likes to play.  I haven’t seen Colin for a month and assumed he’d headed south, as he does, for the winter.  But as I got closer, past the audience that had formed a neat semicircle around him, I saw it was Colin himself, his basket brimming with bills, belting out his repertoire from the 80’s.  He acknowledged my thumbs-up as I walked past.  Even under the maple, he was audible.

After 30 minutes, with no activity beyond the birds feasting on the bright red mulberries, I stopped playing and cocked an ear.  Colin was still at it.

After another 30 minutes, thinking today might be the day I get schneidered (shut out), I turned to find a dollar in my case from an unseen passerby.

During the last 30 minutes, an Orthodox Jewish couple pushing a carriage stopped when they noticed, as I did, that their son couldn’t keep his eyes off me.  I was singing “Tiptoe through the Tulips,” and finished the song, our eyes locked.  The parents clapped, so the boy did too, then dad gave me a dollar.

Not long before I finished my set, a 40-something woman, smartly dressed, walked by and smiled while I sang “My Baby Just Cares for Me.”  She stopped to listen about 10 yards past me, while I crooned my own second verse:

…My baby don’t care for Frank Sinatra.

She shows the exit to Jean Paul Sartre…

She came back with a dollar, taking me from schneidered to a break-even day.

At the fountain, Colin, still amped to the max, raked it in well past his usual quitting time.  The old accordion player, set up much closer to Colin than he needed to be, could barely be heard.