Here I am, always looking for an angle. That comes from growing up on the street when my brothers were away in World War II.

Today, I find that all you need is a chair and a bucket.

It’s not easy to make a dollar on Waterville streets nowadays.

You have to look good, be clean shaven, nice haircut and decorum. Charm goes a long way if you have any to spare.

But if you’re gonna do an act on the street in cold weather, you better have a gimmick, or play a musical instrument and have a sign that reads “Old Favorites.”

OK! I play piano, but you can’t sit on a street corner begging for money with an electronic piano. She wouldn’t have wanted me to do that. She had class.

I’m not talking about begging; I’m just entertaining the summer folks. I don’t need a lot of money at the moment. I write for a couple of wonderful people at our newspapers, and they pay me the going rate, which isn’t much but they seem eager to keep me on.

I eat a little, I watch a bit of television more now. Go to bed early and rise with the sun.

But five or six hours a day is good writing time for me now. I got to keep typing, but a gig of some kind like dancing on Main Street would be cool, and keep me in extra cash.

My brother Jim (who was a part-time opera singer in post-World War II days in St. Louis) always said, when I would hit him for a little extra cash: “There’s no such thing as ‘extra’ cash,” he’d growl, and then he’d slip me a couple of bucks.

But I was a kid back then. Today, I have enough to eat and have my linen jackets pressed. I just need something to do between columns to fill the days.

I would consider doing a stand-up act for laughs, and maybe a couple of bucks to buy nonalcoholic beer and bagels. Maybe too old for that.

Back in the struggling days, I made a lot of “extra” cash by doing impressions of movie stars like Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, as I did in clubs.

When I practice them now, my daughters groan and remark, “Daddy, why do you only do dead people?” Critics.

So for the street corner gig, I have to come up with a different kind of act. I can’t do impressions of Leonardo DiCaprio or Mike Douglas, and nobody remembers Michael Caine.

Hey! I have a couple of chorus boy dance moves I can do from old Gene Kelly movies, but would I need a new pair of tap shoes to use.

But then just picture everybody’s famous columnist, my friend Amy Calder, whispering to her husband, Phil, as they pass by.

“Oh no! Isn’t that poor J.P. over there?”

“Over where?” he asks.

“Over there in front of the Paul J. Schupf Art Center.”

“That old guy in the straw boater doing soft shoe numbers?”

“Oh no!” Amy would weep, “It’s J.P. and he’s gone back to full alcoholic beer.”

“No,” Phil smiles. “He’s trying out new acts to make a little extra cash.”

Amy smiles and sighs. “He was always up to making extra cash.”

Phil shrugs and mutters: “There’s no such thing as extra cash.”

Fade out.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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