Posts Tagged ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’

  1. Under the Maple

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    August 10, 2017 by admin

    All plant life behind the benches has been grubbed up except for the 2 new flowers fronting the dog roses, which, so far, I haven’t identified.  One has tall stems with pink button-like flowers, the other sports a conical catkin-like flower which started out as white fuzz, but is now pinking at the tip as the tiny white petals fall off.

     

    The guitarists are back at the Imagine Mosaic; the cowboy, clad in leather, crooning to his recorded backup of “Cracklin’ Rosie,” is also back at Bethesda Fountain.  So today I set up in the shade of the maple, far enough away from the caricaturist on the other side of the path so as not to obstruct his operation.

     

    For the first 30 minutes or so, I sang to the sky, to the rowboat wranglers on the other side of the fence, to the family of cardinals busily shuttling from the mulberry tree in front of me to the mulberry tree behind.

     

    A group of pre-teen girls from the Caedman School stopped to hula.  “Brooklyn?”  No, I was told, the upper east side.  They danced with uneven enthusiasm; their adult supervision seemed distracted.  After the dance, the kids lined up against the fence and marched off.

     

    At this point I began to wonder if today, for the first time in my busking career, I would make nothing.  A very old woman stopped a few feet past me.  With her back bent to hide her money, she pulled a quarter from her change purse.  The coin bounced out of the case onto the asphalt.  I picked it up and tossed it in.  “Thanks,” I said, happy to have averted a busking schneider.

     

    “Is that a ukulele?”

     

    “Yes, a tenor uke.  That’s why it’s bigger than what you’re used to seeing.”  She seemed please to have her suspicion confirmed so cheaply.

     

    Another small group of preteens, from Harlem, had time for a hula.  “Does it cost anything?”

     

    “Not a thing,” I said, handing out leis.  After a little hula instruction, we were off, through both verses of “The Hukilau Song.”  The adult supervision, in this case, cheered the kids along, took lots of pictures, and managed $2 between them for Mr. Ukulele.

     

    At $2.25, I was still 45 cents shy of break-even, $2.70, the cost of 2 senior rides on the subway.

     

    A young redhead with a bright, open face, strolled by.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    “You bet I do,” she said.  Her name was Ori, a native New Yorker.  She danced to “The Hukilau Song,” then gave me a fiver, and stuck around to hear me play “I Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone.”

     

    Passing back through Bethesda Fountain on my way home, I saw that the cowboy had been replaced by the accordionist, there was do-wop in the arcade, and Lady Liberty, atop her pedestal, was scrolling on her cellphone.  Thanks, Ori, I thought, and Aloha, New York.

     

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