Travel Tales: The Urban 100 Acre Wood

Silly Old Bear

I must start this story

with a little background

information.  The stories

of Christopher Robin,

Winnie the Pooh & friends

are very important in

our family.

Every night for years we would

read stories from the Tales of

Winnie the Pooh.  Rob and I

could do great voices for all the

characters and if you catch us

at the right moment, we still do.

Both of our kids liked Pooh Bear

but especially Brennan.  He had

stuffed animals and puppets.

And banks, clocks and figurines.

Now we will go back to 2003, the

summer of the first Hoosier Experiment.

What is the Hoosier Experiement you may

ask ~ well that's a story for another

time.  But the day I'm talking about is

our first day when it was just me and

the kids and a summer in New York

ahead of us.  I knew exactly what I wanted

to do first.  I just had to find it.

I was looking for a public library branch

in the west 50's.  I was my local branch

when I lived in the neighborhood but

I couldn't remember exactly where it was.

As we were roaming the streets I finally

asked a man and he said he didn't know

but we were in front of a police precinct

and I could ask in there.  OK.  I went in

the lobby and a detective held the door

for me and asked if he could help me. 

I told him I was looking for the nearest library

and he said wait right here and I'll go

look it up.  Cool, this was working out

just great.  And within seconds about

8 detectives come running into the

lobby to get better reception on their

cell phones and they are all yelling into

their phones, "we got a jumpah!"

Oh crud, I pulled the kids next to me

and suddenly felt like I was in an

episode of Law & Order SVU.

They were alerting whatever squad

it is that rescues jumpers from buildings.

With that, our nice detective comes to

rescue us and sends us in the right

direction.

This was the first thing we had to

see.  The originals ~ Christopher

Robin's own ~ Pooh, Tigger, Kanga,

Eeyore and Piglet.  Brennan was

beside himself, he loved it.

If you would like to visit these treasures

they have now moved to the Children's

Center on 42nd Street.

Over that summer each of our kids had a

set amount of spending money, Kate used

hers for Hello Kitty and jewelry.  Brennan

used his for a stuffed Pooh Bear from the

New York City Public Library.  I wanted

to include that in this post but can't

because Brennan has it in his dorm room

at school.  I think he made the perfect choice.

I want to wish my Mum

a Happy 88th Birthday!

Those Taylor girls have

great genes.