The last day in July is another gem. The homeless man is singing “All You Need Is Love” at Strawberry Fields. The chestnut leaves, as expected, are starting to brown from blight. Across the road, past Daniel Webster and the hot dog stand, the pods on the catalpa trees are 18” long. There is the usual commotion up on the mall, where the acrobats whip up the crowd, but all is quiet at Bethesda Fountain. I keep on going; one day a week in the sun is sufficient.

A couple stopped to chat. He was from Ireland, County Galway; she was from Jersey City. “I’ll give you a dollar if you play something Irish,” he said.

I faked a couple of bars of “The Harp Which Once Through Tara’s Halls.”

Satisfied, he reached for his wallet. “We used to sing that in school when we were little kids,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve heard it since.”

A couple of Portuguese girls stopped to hula. One of them showed me how much she’d learned to play the uke from the internet.

No sooner had I taken the leis from the Portuguese girls than I heard a cry of delight. “Oh, look, it’s the hula man. Remember me?” asked a dark-haired twenty-something. “From Beirut? I still have the video.” While she searched her backpack for her camera/phone, she made the introductions. “This is my sister and my cousin and her friend from Queens. Let’s hula.” She pressed some buttons then handed the camera off to her cousin’s friend.

“What did we dance to before?” I asked.

“Hukihukihuki,” she said, handing out the leis. So this time we danced to “My Little Grass Shack.”

“I come every year,” she said, while her cousin dropped a fiver. “I see you next year, ok?”

Aloha to that. A young man told me as he walked by that I was the best yet. I presume he meant best busker and thanked him for the compliment, which was all he had to give. A group of Italians, who did not have time for a hula yesterday, were back today with time to kill. A gay guy in a porkpie hat did a languorous hula for his friends. Add a couple of toddler hulas, and before you can say humahumanukunukuapua’a there was over $16 in my case.