After another long vacation, I returned to the park on a cool, wet day, that evolved into a beautiful sunlit outing at Bethesda Fountain.  The vibes were strange today.  No guitarist picked through the Beatles’ repertoire at the Imagine Mosaic.  No combo set up across the road from Daniel Webster.  There seemed to be no music in the park at all.  The road to Cherry Hill was clogged with police cars, with more police cars parked on the grass and across the road, where clusters of color-coded kids gathered around snack tents, or sat in tight circles on the lawn.  It was Police Appreciation Day, or some such event I was told.  Five hundred kids were gathered, each of whom appeared to have arrived in his own police car.

Walking down the western stairs, I was relieved to see that Bethesda Fountain was free of the no music/heavy police presence vibe.  I opened with “Making Love Ukulele Style.”

I spotted a willowy short-haired woman weaving to the music.  She was 30 yards or more away, but with each song she got closer.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

She was thrilled to be invited and danced a vigorous, interpretive hula that attracted a crowd.  When a mom and daughters from Ohio stopped to watch, my hula dancer threw leis over their heads and egged them on, through yet another iteration of “The Hukilau Song.”  There was raucous laughter at the end of the dance.  Dad from Ohio counted out some singles and put them in my case.  My dancer ran off to meet the photographer she’d been waiting for.  I called her back to learn she was a model from Turkmenistan.  “I love New York,” she said.

A girl came by with 50 cents, but would not hula.  A gray-haired man pushing a stroller with his toddler stopped to listen.  Out of the stroller, the boy bobbed his head and bent his knees to the music.  Dad gave me a fiver.

It was a good day for teen-aged girls.  A dollar here, a quarter there, hula dancers everywhere.  A tour group came by and the leader gave me a dollar.  Her name was Dina.  She said she’d heard me play many times and wanted me to know how much she enjoyed it.

A group of Israeli teens sat around the fountain for a photo.  It was their last day in New York.  The boys would not hula, but the girls, pushing first one girl forward, then another, finally decided they would all hula together.  One of the boys joined them.  As graceful as the girls were, the boy was stiff and awkward, like Frankenstein’s monster on Waikiki.  I got a couple of dollars in donations, plus a coin worth 1/10 of a new shekel, a little less than 3 cents.

A Pakistani contingent came next.  Like the Israelis they sat for photos and giggled among themselves about dancing, but they did not dance.  When they gathered to leave, they too threw some bills my way.

At the end of my set, with over $25 in my case, I played my closing number, “Little Grass Shack,” for Isabella, from Virginia.  She danced a joyful hula, handed back the lei and ran to her parents, who turned and walked away.