SERENADING THE ELEPHANT part one

c/o singingangels.org

COME FLY WITH ME!

             They came in Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps. They came in culottes and sarongs, jeans and suspenders, suits, beachwear and camouflage fatigues: THE REPUBLICAN DELEGATES. As planes  from faraway lands such as Las Vegas, Atlanta and Nashville disgorged their passengers, who should be their first greeting to the North Coast but boys and girls in shiny gold vests and black bow ties singing and dancing to the pounding rhythms of keyboard and electric bass, the former played by my son, Elias Manos, 20 years old and a student of keyboard performance and composition at Cleveland State. There were Sinatra Medleys (including, incongruously, "Chicago"), Brazilian Rumbas, current and classic pop songs, "Ave Maria," "When The Saints Go Marching In." Cell phones rose, making videos, especially when the youngsters belted out patriotic fare: "She's a Grand Old Flag" with marching, "Oh Beautiful" with a dark haired girl of Broadway caliber belting a solo,  "God Bless America" in barbershop harmony.
            "Republicans look like real people," one knee high singer opined and another thought she saw Donald Trump but it was just a man in dark suit and shades with a disheveled mass of yellow something or other crowding the top of a largely bald head who whisked by with two big bags on wheels. Coming off a plane from Nashville was a thin man with long white hair and sapphire eyes who looked at me with the tinge of apprehension some famous people get before being accosted by total strangers who will try to get chummy. He was followed by another distinguished man with long hair and sun glasses and they made their way to the rental car shuttle. They may have been members of Three Dog Night, who I later saw were slated to play at the convention. Later, carrying a small girl and followed by another child and a blond woman was a very tall bearded man with tattoos on his legs and a hoodie over his head. Kevin Love incognito?
           Mixed in with this crowd of largely white people were Clevelanders comeing back from some vacation, especially from the plane for Las Vegas. Lots of "Lebron" and "All In" and "2016 NBA Champions shirts and hats" and many here "of color". Every now and then a wiry seedy disheveled man with backpack and beard flip-flops by.  A protester? One of these, with round sunglasses and bushy Unabomber beard and Fidel Castro olive green kepi sidled by, glances darting uncomfortably here and there.
          Charles Eversole, Artistic Director of the Singing Angels greeted people in an avuncular way and many seemed kind and receptive to the singing and to his good will.
         We will have about seven concerts to give around the convention and I, poor soul, lug and set up the keyboard and amp from one venue to another. My wife at home waits in fear. Will we be bombed? Caught in a crossfire between protest groups and delegates? Accidentally man handled and arrested by Secret Service agents?
         The music was good and the night was uneventful. Mothers yelled at running children. People in wheelchairs waved as if in a parade. "Fly with me come fly with me..."
         If Whitman were alive today it might not have been "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," but "Hoofing Hopkins' Tarmac."