27 Dollar Friday (didn't start 'til midnight)
88 Dollar Saturday (didn't start 'til 12:30 AM)
I feel like, all summer, I have been a field of dry soil.
I have been plowing it, by practicing the basics of music out of the Mel Bay books.
I toiled in the sun, turning the dirt over and burying mango seeds; as I worked on my original songs; often for the entertainment of no one more than a nearby skeezer; but I planted the seeds.
And now, it is October, and the season has brought rain, in the form of tourists, it's starting to fall lightly and moisten the soil, and lo and behold, it turns out that the soil has been fecund, all this time, and there has been nothing wrong with my seeds; and they are plentiful, having been entrenched, one by one on Monday and Tuesday nights, very often.
Now they have germinated. I have been back to earning my average of around the price of one ounce of silver, or about 17 bucks, per hour.
A Meal Of 3 Chicken Thighs And The Sleep Of The Dead
I underwent another failure to show up at the Lilly Pad at an early hour. I didn't actually start playing until almost 12:30.
There was the rather large meal that I ate, to wit, 3 rather large chicken thighs, which I place into a 200 degree oven and let sit for the good part of an hour, until the meat was cooked to the bone at a pretty much inform temperature. There is such a thing as chicken cooked "rare" and the perfect temperature is just shy of the fear-of-salmonella recommended 165 degrees, or so.
I'm more worried about the karma that I am playing with by eating chicken thighs; and will I have to have my head chopped off at some point in order to satisfy the law of it.
It was an awkward beginning to the night, involving skeezers who had sat down on the stoop right by where I play.
Skeezer Etiquette
We walked up to the spot almost in step. They had just rummaged through the trash cans near Lafitt's and had sat down on the stoop, apparently to go through all the containers of alcohol, which would be ones that had landed upright in the trash cans, so that they could condense them into one single container.
But, I said something to the effect that I hoped they weren't planning upon camping out right there, to swill down their drinks and ask everyone who walks by with a cigarette for one, etc. I think I softened it to: "How long were you guy's planning upon sitting there?"
And the first skeezer, who is kind of Latino looking and who I almost think is a guy who Leslie Thompson used to associate with called "hector," and whom I also knew as Hector.
Leslie complained that Hector was an inveterate liar, and I complained that, within the first couple weeks of my setting foot in New Orleans, when I was still 2 years away from seeing Lilly's face for the first time, this Hector and this other guy, who would turn out to be Steve, a guy who would ride up and down Bourbon Street in a wheelchair even though he didn't require one, and would "wheelchair skeeze" tourists. Steve claimed that he had a bonafide gift for talking people out of money. "All I gotta do is get em talking," said Steve.
He had told me this after he had folded up his wheelchair at Leslie's front gate and was walking behind the contraption, pushing it into Leslie's apartment.
But, I was newly arrived in the Quarter, and there were Hector and Steve, sitting by a parking garage, dressed in button up shirts with their hair freshly cut, and Steve called out to me, asking me to go over and play them something with the guitar that was on my back. Steve had presented the offer in a manner consistent with a well heeled tipsy tourist in the mood to hear some music, with money being no matter.
I played one of my better songs, and was just beginning to doubt that either one of them was going to give me anything, as Steve was gushing some pretty suspect flattery, and Hector was sitting there with a dopey grin on his face, and a few minutes went by with no motions being made towards any wallets.
It was then that Steve played the practical joke on me of telling me that Hector was some kind of world renowned Spanish guitarist or some other b.s.
Hector could demonstrate his proficiency on my guitar, if I was so inclined.
I handed the 100 dollar Yamaha guitar to him, more out of curiosity than anything, and technically, more because Steve is a very convincing con man than anything.
Hector hit a couple of chords that sounded like they might be the intro to something. But it quickly became apparent that he hardly knew how to play the thing, his fingers fumbling for strings, and I quickly became bored with his "music" and wanted my guitar back.
I wound up having to stand up in front of him and take a martial arts style stance and say something like: "Listen, man, I'm about to kick your fucking head in if you don't give me my guitar back!" after x number of times asking him for it back, as he continued to strum with a goofy kind of bemused look.
That's actually the Hector whom I think was sitting there, consolidating drinks that had landed upright with the other guy.
And I think that he thinks that I don't recognize him.
Or it's possible that he may have forgotten who I am, since a lot of drinks that landed upright have gone under the bridge since then.
Most likely it's a product of each of our having half-forgotten each other, with the sum of our lapses in memory being equal to the two of us being pretty sure we think we know whom each other are, but not sure enough that we would act upon the premise.
I should have just asked him if he didn't indeed know Leslie Thompson. Then, I could have refreshed his memory to the fact that, besides asking me if I had any weed that he could get for free at my expense upon sight, he generally treated me respectfully.
This particular guy who looked like Hector asked me if I had any weed the moment I sat down.
"If I had any, I'd be smoking it as I tuned up," I said.
I was certainly hoping that they would leave; and that perhaps they had just hung back a second so Hector could see if he could get some free weed at my expense. It was a white lie. I wasn't going to smoke the bud that I had until after they had left and I was tuning up, ready then to play.
I'm not sure how I phrased it, but Hector took as a peccadilo, my attempt to ask them If they could not sit on the stoop that was destined to be sat on by a guy who would tip 5 dollars, and then leave a 50 dollar bill behind, and another couple who would tip me 20 dollars, and who probably wouldn't have stopped if I was "busy" with my "buddies" at the time.
Plus, I wouldn't be playing any heartfelt renditions of "Golden Slumbers," by The Beatles (which I sing to Angelique, the younger of Lilly's two daughters, whom I believe sleeps in the room right behind me) with them there.
I would feel like I was casting pearls before swine, and would have a chip on my shoulder because part of me would be trying to drive them away with "sucky" music. This is why every busker should have something like "Afternoon Delight," by The Starland Vocal Band, at the ready.
Hector was making a big deal over the fact that New Orleans was his city and he will sit wherever he wants there, and nobody will be able to move him. If he was going to leave, it would definitely not be because someone ran him away.
So, I explained that that was the only spot that I could play at "I can't move down to that other stoop; but you guys could sit there and do the same thing there as you would here."
The other guy seemed amenable to them just moving on, but Hector seemed to be staying put on principle.
I wound up sitting there for about 5 minutes, not playing, and then started packing up my stuff.
I thought that I would walk around the corner and take 10 minutes to smoke the bud that I had gotten for 5 dollars outside the Banks Meat Store, and would watch them, to see if, they would deem that they no longer needed to defend their right to sit wherever they wanted to, and would leave of their own volition.
I could call Lilly from that vantage point, who might come out and make short order of running them away. It was almost 12:30 AM, though, and she may have had to do that from out of Angelique's bedroom window, which, I suppose would leave them being too loud, as her only reasonable complaint against them sitting there. But, Lilly never ceases to impress me with ability to gauge a skeezer and take the right tack with them.
At the sight of me packing up, "Hector" said "You don't have to leave man, we're gonna go in a minute.." They probably did have other trash cans to hit. The early bird gets the Montezuma worm...
I need to compose a speech for such situations, perhaps "You're blowing up my hustle; nothing personal" might be my best bet; especially when dealing with hustlers. I usually go with "Hey, I'm trying to get some rich tourists to sit where you are, that's kind of my hustle, and it helps when I'm sitting here alone, because otherwise they might think that I already have a customer who's tipping me..."
This implies both that they are taking up space, and that they are not tipping.
I can usually tell by the tone of their ensuing: "So you want me to leave?" how effective it has been.
"Well, thanks for checking me out, I could hang out if I wasn't working..." to remind them that I'm working.
I most likely could have said: "I'll tell you what; I will roll a joint and smoke it with you, if you promise to let me get back to my thing afterwards..." with success. But therein lies the danger that, once stoned, they will really start to dig the music, and linger.
A Skeezer Savy Sassy Socialite
A couple came along, with the young blond lady being from somewhere not far from here, and the gentleman accompanying her from some faraway place. They wound up tipping me 20 bucks.
A skeezer came along, midway and, after giving me a thumbs up and saying something like: "Rock on, man;" tried to work the couple.
I was was hopeful that, since the lady grew up around here, she would be skeezer savy and would see right through the guy's attempt to ultimately get something for free at their expense.
He had planted himself between them and myself, basically blocking most of their view of me. I was praying that the lady was just having some fun with him, pretending to indulge his skeeze, maybe just to see how ridiculous it could be: "My house burned down last night; I lost everything..."
The guy wound up giving him a cigarette, but no cash (serves him right for blocking me) and the lady then had the right words to make him quit while he was a cigarette ahead, and walk off. This was precipitated by the gentleman having turned his attention away from the skeezer and back to me.
While the guy was skeezing, they had both been still kind of half listening to me; probably sensing the rudeness of starting a guy off on a song and then turning away in the middle of it. I was trying to substitute for the lyrics of what I was singing ("Imagine," by John Lennon) with things like: "Imagine all the people; leaving a musician in peace," etc., as kind of a hint to the couple of how I felt about "A'ksin' Jackson" (a'ksin' everyone he see for something for free).
And, it turned into a pretty decent night, aided by the 50 dollar bill that was on Lilly's stoop.
The bill was folded into a weird kind of acute triangle, not straight in half, which might be why it wasn't investigated by any of the people that walked past during the 20 minutes or so that I played, after the guy who had been sitting there left, and before I found it.
Now it is Sunday. I haven't slept yet, but I have done this blog post along with the drawing of the 50 dollar bill on Lilly's stoop above and below.
I have the notion of showing up earlier than usual at Howard's to watch the Patriots on television. [this just in: cancel the notion, it's 5:23 PM right now, and I'll be lucky if I can get there by the 7:30 PM kickoff).
Berta, one of Howard's housemates, said that she was going to give me an avocado plant, or two. I hope to start buying "grow" lights soon, and turn my apartment into a regular horticultural wonder. Let the artificial sunshine in!
I'm going up to the Uxi Duxi, where I should just have to post this up, since it's already written, and then I guess I could take the buses straight to Howard's; arriving there whenever the buses get me there.
I had made about 35 bucks, including the 20 dollars from the couple, when it started raining just hard enough for me to worry as much about the guitar as what I was trying to play on it.
Angela, the waitress from Lafitt's, who takes her smoke breaks on the stoop next to me, was doing so, at the time. She was protected from the rain, there.
I was all packed up when I heard a guitar and a bleating, croaking voice coming from the direction of the bar, and looked to see a rather ragged looking guy, sitting in one of the chairs provided for the patrons, especially the smoking ones, right at the front corner of the place.
"What a great spot," I thought to myself. Imagine how much money a busker could make on that prime spot of real estate, right where the tipsy people, who may have chosen the bar due to its having a sing-along type of piano man inside, would step out for a cigarette. They would feel safe in breaking their wallet out.
I knew that he probably wouldn't last long there; he was butting heads with the piano guy, who can still be heard from out there. But I also knew that, if the rain stopped and I decided to do another set, I would have to out-croak him. Or worse, people would be like: "Darn, I just gave that guy in front of the bar twenty bucks; I wish I would have saved it, because you blow him away!" type of thing.
"Do you have any pull, as far as getting him to leave," I asked Angela.
She didn't know what I was talking about at first, but, after I pointed out the guy to her, she stood up stiffly and said: "Oh, I've asked that guy to leave like 3 times already!" and then went off in his direction.
It crossed my mind that whoever it was would see her make a beeline from me to him, and might associate himself being run of with my having asked her to.
But, as I walked by the bar, she walked past him and went inside. It wasn't until I was crossing the street to the next block that I heard the croaking stop. Angela has got some street smarts. And good taste in smoke break music...
The rain stopped, as I was at The Quartermaster getting a can of cat food and a coffee, and so, the manager within told me: "Well, the rain stopped; come on; back to work; it's only 1:50 AM!"
And so, placing my coffee down next to me, I began to play a second set at 1:50AM., and played for an hour, during which the highlight was one guy, who sat on the stoop and threw me a 5 dollar tip as he listened.
This brought me up to about 38 dollars for the night, or so I thought.
I had packed up my stuff and taken the the spotlight down from the vines when I saw something laying on the stoop. It really didn't look like money. But, it was a 50 dollar bill.
It was probably mleft by the last guy to have sat there, who had tipped me 5 dollars. I wondered if he had left it there so I would find it; in order to avoid my embarrassing him, should I have brimmed over with gratitude. I thought it might have been from one of the tourists who aim for the tip basket from far enough away so that an errant shot could very well wind up the 5 feet away from me that it was.
But, it would take an obscenely wealthy person to cavalierly flick a 50 in the direction of a street musician, and just assume that he would get it.
It will remain a mystery.
It brought my total to 88 dollars for 2 hours and 20 minutes of playing.
I can't reasonably count the 50 dollars as busking proceeds, nor adjust my expectations of future earnings, based upon getting it.
Most likely, the guy felt that he had gotten 5 dollars worth of fun out of me, and had accidentally dropped the thing.
Without it, I would have averaged the $16.28 per hour; that I have become accustomed to, the past couple years (since becoming proficient on the harmonica).
You've just read: 2,198 words
88 Dollar Saturday (didn't start 'til 12:30 AM)
 |
| The 50 Dollar Bill, Just As It Appeared To Me |
I have been plowing it, by practicing the basics of music out of the Mel Bay books.
I toiled in the sun, turning the dirt over and burying mango seeds; as I worked on my original songs; often for the entertainment of no one more than a nearby skeezer; but I planted the seeds.
And now, it is October, and the season has brought rain, in the form of tourists, it's starting to fall lightly and moisten the soil, and lo and behold, it turns out that the soil has been fecund, all this time, and there has been nothing wrong with my seeds; and they are plentiful, having been entrenched, one by one on Monday and Tuesday nights, very often.
Now they have germinated. I have been back to earning my average of around the price of one ounce of silver, or about 17 bucks, per hour.
A Meal Of 3 Chicken Thighs And The Sleep Of The Dead
I underwent another failure to show up at the Lilly Pad at an early hour. I didn't actually start playing until almost 12:30.
There was the rather large meal that I ate, to wit, 3 rather large chicken thighs, which I place into a 200 degree oven and let sit for the good part of an hour, until the meat was cooked to the bone at a pretty much inform temperature. There is such a thing as chicken cooked "rare" and the perfect temperature is just shy of the fear-of-salmonella recommended 165 degrees, or so.
I'm more worried about the karma that I am playing with by eating chicken thighs; and will I have to have my head chopped off at some point in order to satisfy the law of it.
It was an awkward beginning to the night, involving skeezers who had sat down on the stoop right by where I play.
Skeezer Etiquette
We walked up to the spot almost in step. They had just rummaged through the trash cans near Lafitt's and had sat down on the stoop, apparently to go through all the containers of alcohol, which would be ones that had landed upright in the trash cans, so that they could condense them into one single container.
But, I said something to the effect that I hoped they weren't planning upon camping out right there, to swill down their drinks and ask everyone who walks by with a cigarette for one, etc. I think I softened it to: "How long were you guy's planning upon sitting there?"
And the first skeezer, who is kind of Latino looking and who I almost think is a guy who Leslie Thompson used to associate with called "hector," and whom I also knew as Hector.
Leslie complained that Hector was an inveterate liar, and I complained that, within the first couple weeks of my setting foot in New Orleans, when I was still 2 years away from seeing Lilly's face for the first time, this Hector and this other guy, who would turn out to be Steve, a guy who would ride up and down Bourbon Street in a wheelchair even though he didn't require one, and would "wheelchair skeeze" tourists. Steve claimed that he had a bonafide gift for talking people out of money. "All I gotta do is get em talking," said Steve.
He had told me this after he had folded up his wheelchair at Leslie's front gate and was walking behind the contraption, pushing it into Leslie's apartment.
But, I was newly arrived in the Quarter, and there were Hector and Steve, sitting by a parking garage, dressed in button up shirts with their hair freshly cut, and Steve called out to me, asking me to go over and play them something with the guitar that was on my back. Steve had presented the offer in a manner consistent with a well heeled tipsy tourist in the mood to hear some music, with money being no matter.
I played one of my better songs, and was just beginning to doubt that either one of them was going to give me anything, as Steve was gushing some pretty suspect flattery, and Hector was sitting there with a dopey grin on his face, and a few minutes went by with no motions being made towards any wallets.
It was then that Steve played the practical joke on me of telling me that Hector was some kind of world renowned Spanish guitarist or some other b.s.
Hector could demonstrate his proficiency on my guitar, if I was so inclined.
I handed the 100 dollar Yamaha guitar to him, more out of curiosity than anything, and technically, more because Steve is a very convincing con man than anything.
Hector hit a couple of chords that sounded like they might be the intro to something. But it quickly became apparent that he hardly knew how to play the thing, his fingers fumbling for strings, and I quickly became bored with his "music" and wanted my guitar back.
I wound up having to stand up in front of him and take a martial arts style stance and say something like: "Listen, man, I'm about to kick your fucking head in if you don't give me my guitar back!" after x number of times asking him for it back, as he continued to strum with a goofy kind of bemused look.
That's actually the Hector whom I think was sitting there, consolidating drinks that had landed upright with the other guy.
And I think that he thinks that I don't recognize him.
Or it's possible that he may have forgotten who I am, since a lot of drinks that landed upright have gone under the bridge since then.
Most likely it's a product of each of our having half-forgotten each other, with the sum of our lapses in memory being equal to the two of us being pretty sure we think we know whom each other are, but not sure enough that we would act upon the premise.
I should have just asked him if he didn't indeed know Leslie Thompson. Then, I could have refreshed his memory to the fact that, besides asking me if I had any weed that he could get for free at my expense upon sight, he generally treated me respectfully.
This particular guy who looked like Hector asked me if I had any weed the moment I sat down.
"If I had any, I'd be smoking it as I tuned up," I said.
I was certainly hoping that they would leave; and that perhaps they had just hung back a second so Hector could see if he could get some free weed at my expense. It was a white lie. I wasn't going to smoke the bud that I had until after they had left and I was tuning up, ready then to play.
I'm not sure how I phrased it, but Hector took as a peccadilo, my attempt to ask them If they could not sit on the stoop that was destined to be sat on by a guy who would tip 5 dollars, and then leave a 50 dollar bill behind, and another couple who would tip me 20 dollars, and who probably wouldn't have stopped if I was "busy" with my "buddies" at the time.
Plus, I wouldn't be playing any heartfelt renditions of "Golden Slumbers," by The Beatles (which I sing to Angelique, the younger of Lilly's two daughters, whom I believe sleeps in the room right behind me) with them there.
I would feel like I was casting pearls before swine, and would have a chip on my shoulder because part of me would be trying to drive them away with "sucky" music. This is why every busker should have something like "Afternoon Delight," by The Starland Vocal Band, at the ready.
Hector was making a big deal over the fact that New Orleans was his city and he will sit wherever he wants there, and nobody will be able to move him. If he was going to leave, it would definitely not be because someone ran him away.
So, I explained that that was the only spot that I could play at "I can't move down to that other stoop; but you guys could sit there and do the same thing there as you would here."
The other guy seemed amenable to them just moving on, but Hector seemed to be staying put on principle.
I wound up sitting there for about 5 minutes, not playing, and then started packing up my stuff.
I thought that I would walk around the corner and take 10 minutes to smoke the bud that I had gotten for 5 dollars outside the Banks Meat Store, and would watch them, to see if, they would deem that they no longer needed to defend their right to sit wherever they wanted to, and would leave of their own volition.
I could call Lilly from that vantage point, who might come out and make short order of running them away. It was almost 12:30 AM, though, and she may have had to do that from out of Angelique's bedroom window, which, I suppose would leave them being too loud, as her only reasonable complaint against them sitting there. But, Lilly never ceases to impress me with ability to gauge a skeezer and take the right tack with them.
At the sight of me packing up, "Hector" said "You don't have to leave man, we're gonna go in a minute.." They probably did have other trash cans to hit. The early bird gets the Montezuma worm...
I need to compose a speech for such situations, perhaps "You're blowing up my hustle; nothing personal" might be my best bet; especially when dealing with hustlers. I usually go with "Hey, I'm trying to get some rich tourists to sit where you are, that's kind of my hustle, and it helps when I'm sitting here alone, because otherwise they might think that I already have a customer who's tipping me..."
This implies both that they are taking up space, and that they are not tipping.
I can usually tell by the tone of their ensuing: "So you want me to leave?" how effective it has been.
"Well, thanks for checking me out, I could hang out if I wasn't working..." to remind them that I'm working.
I most likely could have said: "I'll tell you what; I will roll a joint and smoke it with you, if you promise to let me get back to my thing afterwards..." with success. But therein lies the danger that, once stoned, they will really start to dig the music, and linger.
A Skeezer Savy Sassy Socialite
A couple came along, with the young blond lady being from somewhere not far from here, and the gentleman accompanying her from some faraway place. They wound up tipping me 20 bucks.
A skeezer came along, midway and, after giving me a thumbs up and saying something like: "Rock on, man;" tried to work the couple.
I was was hopeful that, since the lady grew up around here, she would be skeezer savy and would see right through the guy's attempt to ultimately get something for free at their expense.
He had planted himself between them and myself, basically blocking most of their view of me. I was praying that the lady was just having some fun with him, pretending to indulge his skeeze, maybe just to see how ridiculous it could be: "My house burned down last night; I lost everything..."
The guy wound up giving him a cigarette, but no cash (serves him right for blocking me) and the lady then had the right words to make him quit while he was a cigarette ahead, and walk off. This was precipitated by the gentleman having turned his attention away from the skeezer and back to me.
While the guy was skeezing, they had both been still kind of half listening to me; probably sensing the rudeness of starting a guy off on a song and then turning away in the middle of it. I was trying to substitute for the lyrics of what I was singing ("Imagine," by John Lennon) with things like: "Imagine all the people; leaving a musician in peace," etc., as kind of a hint to the couple of how I felt about "A'ksin' Jackson" (a'ksin' everyone he see for something for free).
And, it turned into a pretty decent night, aided by the 50 dollar bill that was on Lilly's stoop.
The bill was folded into a weird kind of acute triangle, not straight in half, which might be why it wasn't investigated by any of the people that walked past during the 20 minutes or so that I played, after the guy who had been sitting there left, and before I found it.
Now it is Sunday. I haven't slept yet, but I have done this blog post along with the drawing of the 50 dollar bill on Lilly's stoop above and below.
I have the notion of showing up earlier than usual at Howard's to watch the Patriots on television. [this just in: cancel the notion, it's 5:23 PM right now, and I'll be lucky if I can get there by the 7:30 PM kickoff).
Berta, one of Howard's housemates, said that she was going to give me an avocado plant, or two. I hope to start buying "grow" lights soon, and turn my apartment into a regular horticultural wonder. Let the artificial sunshine in!
I'm going up to the Uxi Duxi, where I should just have to post this up, since it's already written, and then I guess I could take the buses straight to Howard's; arriving there whenever the buses get me there.
I had made about 35 bucks, including the 20 dollars from the couple, when it started raining just hard enough for me to worry as much about the guitar as what I was trying to play on it.
Angela, the waitress from Lafitt's, who takes her smoke breaks on the stoop next to me, was doing so, at the time. She was protected from the rain, there.
I was all packed up when I heard a guitar and a bleating, croaking voice coming from the direction of the bar, and looked to see a rather ragged looking guy, sitting in one of the chairs provided for the patrons, especially the smoking ones, right at the front corner of the place.
"What a great spot," I thought to myself. Imagine how much money a busker could make on that prime spot of real estate, right where the tipsy people, who may have chosen the bar due to its having a sing-along type of piano man inside, would step out for a cigarette. They would feel safe in breaking their wallet out.
I knew that he probably wouldn't last long there; he was butting heads with the piano guy, who can still be heard from out there. But I also knew that, if the rain stopped and I decided to do another set, I would have to out-croak him. Or worse, people would be like: "Darn, I just gave that guy in front of the bar twenty bucks; I wish I would have saved it, because you blow him away!" type of thing.
"Do you have any pull, as far as getting him to leave," I asked Angela.
She didn't know what I was talking about at first, but, after I pointed out the guy to her, she stood up stiffly and said: "Oh, I've asked that guy to leave like 3 times already!" and then went off in his direction.
It crossed my mind that whoever it was would see her make a beeline from me to him, and might associate himself being run of with my having asked her to.
But, as I walked by the bar, she walked past him and went inside. It wasn't until I was crossing the street to the next block that I heard the croaking stop. Angela has got some street smarts. And good taste in smoke break music...
The rain stopped, as I was at The Quartermaster getting a can of cat food and a coffee, and so, the manager within told me: "Well, the rain stopped; come on; back to work; it's only 1:50 AM!"
And so, placing my coffee down next to me, I began to play a second set at 1:50AM., and played for an hour, during which the highlight was one guy, who sat on the stoop and threw me a 5 dollar tip as he listened.
This brought me up to about 38 dollars for the night, or so I thought.
I had packed up my stuff and taken the the spotlight down from the vines when I saw something laying on the stoop. It really didn't look like money. But, it was a 50 dollar bill.
It was probably mleft by the last guy to have sat there, who had tipped me 5 dollars. I wondered if he had left it there so I would find it; in order to avoid my embarrassing him, should I have brimmed over with gratitude. I thought it might have been from one of the tourists who aim for the tip basket from far enough away so that an errant shot could very well wind up the 5 feet away from me that it was.
It will remain a mystery.
It brought my total to 88 dollars for 2 hours and 20 minutes of playing.
I can't reasonably count the 50 dollars as busking proceeds, nor adjust my expectations of future earnings, based upon getting it.
Most likely, the guy felt that he had gotten 5 dollars worth of fun out of me, and had accidentally dropped the thing.
Without it, I would have averaged the $16.28 per hour; that I have become accustomed to, the past couple years (since becoming proficient on the harmonica).
You've just read: 2,198 words
