Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
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Good Start to the Summer
0July 7, 2017 by admin
Back from the July 4th break, and the stella d’oro daylilies are as fat as figs. I can’t identify the major new plantings at the Women’s Gate; one has dark pink chive-like flowers and long, smooth-edged pointy leaves, the other has similar leaves and light pyramidal flowers opening pinkish-purple, like an artichoke.
The first signs of the blight have appeared on the chestnut. I saw little, if any, blight on the second tree across the path. On the other side of the road, the catalpa pods hang like 18-inch-long string beans.
Center stage again was mine. Alexis, a toddler of 2 or so, danced a hula.
A 50-ish couple was hanging around; the woman wanted to dance. After Alexis was shown how to tip the busker, she did. She knew all the moves to “The Hukilau Song,” which attracted a crowd. After the dance she told me that she and her husband had a ukulele/hula act in California. “There he is,” she pointed to a barrel-chested man who was walking toward us. He had long, gray hair and wore a beautiful aloha shirt. I handed him my uke. He made it sing with a softly voiced Hawaiian folk tune, in a way my plink-a-plink style of strumming could never do. They were good for a fiver.
A tourist family stopped to dance. While a young teen stumbled his way to the hukilua, his family laughed and snapped photos. Dad dropped a fiver; grandma chipped in a buck.
While setting up today, a couple with a young child had been sitting at the fountain next to me. The child was too shy to hula. As my act got underway, they’d wandered off. Now they were back. Having seen others do it, the kid was ready to hula. A good observer, she needed no lessons.
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Three strapping boys, maybe 16-18, just had to hula. They were from Florida, in NYC with a mom, who watched from the shade, inured to their nonsense. The hula was a shambles, and when they were done they came up with 5 singles among them.
Throughout my set, a number of people came by to drop a dollar or two. An Argentine bombshell in her early 20’s danced the hula for her friends. In addition to a dollar, she gave me 3 pieces of Lindt chocolate. A family from Kentucky stopped to hula. When the young boy of 8-9 faltered, dad took a lei and danced alongside for support.
At $29, it was another high dollar day. On my way out of the park, I opened a piece of chocolate. It had melted in the sun; I had to lick it off the wrapper.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
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Hulapalooza
0June 29, 2017 by admin
After more than a week, I made my way back to the park. At the entrance, the pink begonias and a swath of green and white lamium were doing well, and, behind the benches, the workhorse roses, pink and red, provided great color. At the Imagine Mosaic, one of the platoon guitarists was between songs. He looked up as I passed. “I got the same shirt,” he said.
“It’s the original Tom Selleck, Magnum PI,” I said.
Under the gaze of Daniel Webster, another cloud of spent clover rose above the lawn.
Center stage was mine. I’d barely tuned up when 2 tweens stopped to hula. In quick succession, another girl of about the same age, from DC, wanted to hula, then 2 cousins from Idaho took a turn. I had $5 in my case before I came home from the hukilau, and started my set in earnest.
A teenage girl walked by and dropped 60 cents. She turned out to be one of the few today who did not hula.
A girl of 9 or 10 showed some interest, but when I asked if she had time for a hula, she shook her head no, only to return a short while later to say, “I changed my mind.” She was from Puerto Rico. She danced with a rocking motion, laughing all the while her mom took pictures. For a change of pace, I sang “My Little Grass Shack.” Mom contributed $2.
A young teen danced and walked away. She came back with 4 quarters.
A group of 10 kids talked each other into a group dance. I tore open a new package of leis to accommodate them. One of them, a slender girl named Hallie, was pushed to the front, where she led the group in a sinewy interpretation of “The Hukilau Song.” She said she was from Colombia. “The country, not South Carolina.” Another few dollars floated into my case.
A Russian man and his family were enchanted by my solar-powered hula girls. “How much?”
“Five dollars,” I told him. He started to bargain, but I held firm, and showed him the plastic shell that would protect it in his luggage. He picked up the pink doll, which was broken. I took it from him and showed his son how it worked, while the man contemplated the green or the yellow. By this time, the enchantment had faded. “If you really like these, you can probably get 2 for 5 on the internet,” I told him.
He laughed and said, “Thank you for your honesty.” They walked off, but the man soon came back with a dollar for my time.
A young girl sat at the edge of the fountain with a book. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“Maybe later,” she said, “with my sister.”
A girl from Nashville went to the hukilau, and a short time later 2 more dancers from Nashville did the same.
A Mexican boy danced at his mother’s insistence. Behind her camera, she swayed to the music, while the boy rather woodenly flapped his arms.
In addition to the saffron-robed begging Buddhists, who shove prayer flags in peoples’ hands, Bethesda Fountain is also home to teenage boys selling candy for playground equipment. One of them bopped up to me and said, “I got lots of change for you, bud.”
Five girls from Staten Island stopped to hula. “What fun,” one of them said, taking a single from her purse. Perhaps some of the others had also made donations, but I didn’t notice, because the young girl who had been reading returned with her sister. Each of them had a dollar for me.
Toward the end of my set, the sisters came back with their mom. “I didn’t get a chance to take a picture,” she said. I put leis back on them and posed for the shot, after which mom put another dollar in my case.
I counted $25.02, my second best take of the season. Judged by the number of hulas danced, however, it was an all-time high.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: My Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
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The Summer Solstice
0June 21, 2017 by admin
The air was thick with the scent of summer roses. I had a Proustian recall of my boyhood home where, in summer, my mother kept the living room supplied with fresh-cut roses from the back yard. Summers then consisted of sticky drives to swim clubs and boarding house rentals at the Jersey shore with my cousins. At 9, I went to a YMCA camp for the summer, then to Boy Scout camp. There, at Ken-Etiwa-Pec, I picked up a uke for the time.
“Hi, cowboy,” I said. He was walking away as I approached. Last summer, the cowboy and I both played on the same stage, and had reached a détente. He left around 12:30; I set up when he was gone. The other buskers were in place, the Boyd Family and Friends, the Big Bubble Man, and, new to the mix, an all green Lady Liberty on stilts.
Three teenagers came by. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“Does it cost anything?”
“Nooo,” I sang out. One of the girls put on a lei and hula-ed to the hukilau. Her friends videoed the dance, then each put a dollar in my case.
A well-dressed woman of a certain age came by a little later and added another dollar.
A toddler toddled up to me, her dad close behind. She was coy, but I had a special baby lei for her and that did the trick. At the end of the dance, a crowd of people, who had gathered to see the cute hula girl, applauded. Dad gave me a fiver.
The mood of the park deteriorated after that. First, a woman showed up and started loudly digging refundable cans out of the trash. Later, the bearded, bare-chested homeless man climbed into the fountain and started his search for silver. At the same time, a kid of 8 or 9 also climbed into the water, as if it were a swimming pool. He had adult supervision, a man with a bike, who exerted no control. The kid collected copper, building stacks of pennies on the fountain’s inside ledge. Resisting an impulse to engage with the man, or yell at the kid, I played, distracted, through to the end of my set.
I had $8. As I left, I walked around to the homeless man and handed him a single.
“Thanks, bud.”
Aloha.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
