Mimi was a regular part of our family’s Saturday trips to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Participants were usually Nina, Mimi, Peter, Joan, and Margaret.
Mimi would arrive at our house in Yonkers on Friday evening at or shortly after supper. Then, on Saturday morning Nina, Mimi, Peter, Joan and Margaret would walk the mile to the Tuckahoe train station and take the train to 125th Street where we changed to the subway and got off at 81st Street for the underground entrance to the Museum. My recollection is that we set out at ~ 8:30 so we could arrive at the Museum at just after 10:00 when it opened. (It was years later that I discovered the Museum also had a street level entrance.)
Many of these excursions were highlighted by the 11:00 program on some Saturday mornings where we enjoyed things like a speaker with slides, a movie about exploring an underwater city, volcanoes of the world, or big cats of Africa and Asia. We would have lunch in the Museum cafeteria, where Mimi always made sure we got chocolate milk and a dessert. The afternoon was spent looking at exhibits. Favorites included the big hanging whale:
the Hall of North American Mammals with its lifelike dioramas:
the Great Canoe, and the Hall of Dinosaurs:
We also liked the Hall of North American Birds (where some of the exhibits included birds collected by our grandfather and great grandfather, Basil Hicks and William Dutcher). Gems and minerals, butterflies, jungles scenes with jungle sounds also stand out as memories.
By later afternoon we were pretty tired (and probably getting cranky) so we returned by subway and train and walked home, arriving in time to rest briefly before supper.