The marketing manager placed me in an outside nook of the carriage house. This suited me fine as I could either stand in the shade or stand with my back to the sun; I could avoid sunburn on a face already irritated by allergies. The walls on two sides would also amplify my voice nicely.
I could see people coming from three different paths, and as I learned my surroundings I realized that there were often people behind me on either side of the carriage house.
I didn't have any particular plan; I just started singing out of my repertoire. My first senior moment was not remembering all that was in my repertoire.
Things went quite well. Almost everybody smiled at me and three people added a dollar in the first half hour to my seed dollar in my cap. The informality of the situation made my life easier. If I made a mistake, I just shrugged it off. I even felt comfortable starting over again if I didn't feel I was right.
I tried to make eye contact as often as I could. It embarrassed some people who seemed to want to walk faster, and other people would give me encouraging looks. Whenever kids were around I would start "I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly" or "Allouette". It almost always got their attention but the family generally kept walking. These two songs made most adults passing by smile.
I did my "La ci darem la mano" segment of the seduction song from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" several times. Not one woman realized what I was singing, and so I didn't bother to follow-up with my parody, "Solamente un scherzo (It's only a joke).
I was disappointed that few people stopped and those who did really didn't make any conversation. I would get some compliments as people passed by, and some staff chatted a bit. I hoped that some people would ask what I was singing.
The real downer was that I was getting colder. It was in the 50s when I left home and I had a light jacket and no sweater. With Lake Superior only about 200 feet away it was probably in the low 40s. There were many people in shorts and T-shirts, but they were back in cars or buildings before they got to cold.
I did move to the sun (or was it the sun moved to me) and my black jacket helped a bit. Fast forwarding, I was still cold when we went out to lunch, when we took our own tour, and after we got home. I am almost warm as I write this four hours later.
At about one-and-a-half hours my throat started feeling rough and I had to choose what I sang carefully, avoid the "high" notes. With about fifteen minutes to go, I started hearing my notes wavering more and more. With about five minutes to go, my wife returned to pick me up. She could hear from several feet away that I needed to stop.
But before I packed up I had to at least pretend I was singing for a photo.
Meanwhile, the next act was setting up in the section behind me. I don't know their name, but I had seen them at the Gallery Hop auditions. They were also using a portable PA. I'm glad I didn't follow them; they were so much more polished. I waved at them as I went by and dropped one of my three dollars in the guitar case. The other two dollars I put in the donation jar for Glensheen.As we headed for lunch the marketing manager thanked me for coming and asked me to come again. I don't know if she had heard me or gotten any comments.
My throat has recovered and I am not cold anymore. I wonder if I'll do this at Grandma's Marathon next month.
