Returning to the park after Labor Day, I found another 2 weeks of drought had taken a toll. Red fuschia and begonia languished in the shade; a small patch of cornflower looked like abused badminton birdies, brown and broken. Amid the dependable roses, fat yellow rose hips formed. The last of the cleome under the dogwood bloomed white, while the great mass of them behind the benches had burned up.

The crowds were thin. The guitarist sang “All You Need is Love” to a small audience at the Imagine Mosaic. At the road, where, amazingly, bike riders stopped for the light, the spent spikes of Lady’s Mantle were 4 feet high, sedum showed some pink florets and the astilbe, like the cleome, was burned to a crisp.

I approached the cowboy. “When’s quitting time?”

“I have no idea.” He looked at his watch and said, “15 minutes.”

So I moved on, past the portraitists under the maple, to my #3 spot, under the sheltering bush across from the boat rental kiosk, where I sang, for the most part, to myself. At one point a group of 5 young people from the Czech Republic stopped. “I’ll dance the hula if you teach me how,” said a 20-something woman. I did, and off we went to the hukilau. After the dance, I told her of my visit to Prague “before you were born, in 1970.”
.
“That’s before my parents were born,” she said. “You have such good memories of my country,” she added. “Now you have given us good memories of yours.” With that, they walked off.

After 30 minutes, I tossed all my paraphernalia into my case and went back to center stage. By this time, a rock trio had set up near the lake and were shouting lyrics rather than singing them, like a Seattle grunge band. The doo-wop group was making great use of the acoustics in the arcade. Despite the ambient noise, however, I set up again. As long as I played, I couldn’t hear the competition.

A jolly man and his jolly wife gave me a dollar. The man said my music was making a wonderful day even more so. A lady walked by and tossed a dollar in my case. Two women, who had been sitting on the bench, tapping their feet to my tunes, finally picked up their belongings and made ready to leave. But first they put $2 in my case and chatted about the old songs.

A bride and groom, with entourage, appeared at the fountain. It was already past quitting time, but I sang out “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” for them, then closed, as usual, with “Little Grass Shack.”