The weekend seemed to come early at Bethesda Fountain Friday. In one corner was an electric keyboard playing cool jazz at respectful, if still illegal, volume. The rhythm and blues cowboy was in another. A couple of kids, working things out on guitars, staked out the space on the west side of the fountain. John Boyd and his orchestra occupied the Arcade. (I call it an orchestra now because he\u2019s added a piano.) If I\u2019d wanted to join this circus, I\u2019d have to do it from a rowboat.<\/p>\n
Things were more sedate under the maple. I played for a long while without a nibble; I sang to the warm blue sky and the puffy white clouds skittering behind the towers of the San Remo on Central Park West. I sang to the solar-powered hula girl on the asphalt next to my case. \u201cHonolulu Baby,\u201d \u201cHonolulu Eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Spanish girl made her friends stop so she could hula. She gave me $1. A short while later, a mother and her teen-aged daughter happily went to the hukilau. The mother gave me $2, but she didn\u2019t answer when I asked her where she was from. It did seem this week as if all New Yorkers had left town.<\/p>\n
A young couple from New Orleans, he South Asian, she wearing a mezuzah, had time for a hula. She gave me a dollar.<\/p>\n
A portly man from the heartland challenged me, \u201cCan you play \u2018The Hawaiian Wedding Song?\u2019\u201d I, of course, could, and did. He softly sang along, nodding approval to his daughter, who was not quite scowling, and to his wife, who was. They knew what was coming. \u201cNow, can you sing it in Hawaiian?\u201d He was holding back the dollar bill he\u2019d fished out of his wallet.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, but I\u2019ve got a feeling you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
He gave me the dollar and walked off triumphant, singing, \u201cEia au ke kali nei.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"