Comic Books

Chris’ mother didn’t approve of comic books.  My mother didn’t either.  Neither of us were permitted to buy comics.  We weren’t exactly forbidden from reading them though.

I remember the extreme pleasure I had one day when my parents dragged us over to their friends, the Hardins, for a family to family visit.  The Hardin children were permitted comics.  They had comics galore upstairs in their attic family room.  My brothers played trains,or something, with the Hardin boys.  I read through the treasure boxes of Archie and Veronica, Superman and Lois Lane, Nancy, - even Mad Magazine and Action Adventure comics.

Chris had much better, more regular, access to the restricted material.  Every week the Stephens brothers had a hair cut. The barber shop kept an ample supply of comics on hand. Chris read while he waited and even read while his hair was being cut.

Beyond the barber shop, Chris continued his interest in comics.  Somehow he acquired a few, which he put into his little red wagon.  It was the start of his first book business.  Chris wheeled the wagon back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the empty lot.  He traded comics - one from the wagon in exchange for three from the customer.  The ratio worked.  The customer had already read, any times, the three he gave up.  They were devalued in his mind compared to the one he hadn’t read yet.

Chris’ little wagon comic business prospered.  The wagon filled up and then some.  Now, seventy years later, Chris likes to speculate on the value of that inventory.  Millions probaby! The inventory didn’t make it through their next move though. The comics “mysteriously” disappeared.  Chris’ mother never did approve.

My mother might well have committed the same judgemental high crime and dreadful waste of a future fortune.

In this handful of photos of Chris that Isabel’s Uncle Gregory gave her, the one all the way on the right is the comic book entrepreneur himself.

Greenview

When Chris was about eight years old the family moved again.  Jan found a lovely apartment at the northern edge of Chicago.  This apartment had plenty of windows.  From the central hall, you could see a window letting in sunlight from the front of the building. You could turn around and see another window letting in light from behind the building.

This bright apartment on Greenview was in a much better neighborhood than the one on Agatite.  Chris had the freedom to wander all day.  He did.  There were nice, wide, curvy streets in this area.  Chris most often walked south, where there were several parks.  There was also an attraction closer to home.

A big empty lot sprawled right across the street from his apartment.  The city was built up around it, but some inheritance dispute kept the lot undeveloped for the entire time that Chris lived on Greenview.  The lot was a bit scruffy but several trees grew there.  Kids played ball there sometimes.

In most ways, the move from Agatite to Greenview really improved Chris' life.

There was one big drawback though.  The nicer apartment in the better neighborhood was more expensive.  His parents couldn’t afford to keep him in the National College of Education in Evanston.  Chris loved that school and didn’t love the Chicago public school.  He was “dumped”, as he says, back into the public system.

National had been organized into half-year semesters and he had been skipped ahead 3 of those semesters.  The Chicago school didn’t have half-years.  When he started school that autumn, they could move him forward an additional semester to put him two full years ahead.  Or they could put him back a semester, so he would only be one full year ahead. They moved him back.  It made him feel crummy, as if he’d been held back; had failed.

The exact same thing happened to my mother.  She’d also been promoted a year and a half ahead in one school system, then in another school, without half-years, had been dropped down to only one year ahead.  She felt the same way Chris felt. 

 Nevertheless, both Chris and my mother turned out fine. They were each smart cookies, making their way through life.

The advantages of Chris’ new apartment were fantastic.  He loved exploring far and wide. He loved seeing and discovering things.  Chris and his brothers and his parents enjoyed their time on Greenview Avenue.

* Note:  In the photo above, Chris' family's apartment was a half block north of the red marker.  He lived there in the early 1950s.  This photo shows how the area looks well into the 21st century.  The empty lot Chris liked cross the street is gone.  Dispute settled.  Built up.

More change.  The apartment building on Agatite Street was torn down shortly after the family moved away.  Several blocks worth of nasty living space was razed and a new hospital was built n that space.

This gave Chris a good idea.  "Hey Matt," Chris said.  "You should go into the hospital and tell them you were born there.  They'd say, 'what? 1950?  no.  You couldn't have been.  The hospital wasn't even built yet.' and you could say, 'nevertheless, this is the exact spot where I was born.' "  And it was.  Good true joke.

Quiz Kid

 

a post from another blog - riverrunbookshop.blogspot.com
posted THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2013 - THE MISSING BIT MORE

    Even as a Little Kid, Chris Stephens was a Big Reader. He was a library regular. He had an inquisitive mind too, but overwhelmlngly, his was an acquisitive mind. He acquired knowledge. He acquired information. He wanted to know things.

    Young Chris read about animals and trees and Native American tribes. He read history and etymology. He read about countries where the stamps in his stamp collection originated. He read about coins and about moths and butterflies.

    Much later, when I met him, he was still collecting butterflies. He looked great leaping through meadows with his net held high above his head. Like Vladimir Nabokov, Chris collected moths, butterflies and interesting words.

    Young Chris read mostly non-fiction, but he read some fiction too. Cowboy fiction. Science fiction. Baseball stories. Comic books.

    Chris acquired so darned much information that he seemed a perfect candidate for the Quiz Kids Radio Show. In the “green room”, before the show started, the personable Quiz Kids host chatted with Chris. He took notes with which to later betray Chris.

    Young Chris was too short to reach the microphone so an assistant got a couple of telephone books to put on Chris’ chair. I don’t think those 4-inch thick telephone books even exist nowadays. Three other kids sat at the table. They were able to speak into their microphones without the assistance of height boosters.

    The red light went on for live radio. The host asked questions. Three little geniuses were eager to answer. Not Chris. It wasn’t his style. Chris sat on his hands, even for easy questions. The host took out his notes and asked the kids obscure questions about Native Americans and insects and tiny countries that issued lovely stamps. The other kids scowled. Only Chris knew these particular answers. He didn’t raise his hand though. Didn’t want to. But it was radio. No one could see whose hand was up and whose hand was quite resolutely down.

    “Ah. I see little Chris Stephens has his hand up”, lied the host smoothly. Trapped on live radio by an entertainment professional, Chris was forced to answer questions. He didn’t like it though. He didn’t want to ever return.

    Chris went back to the hobbies he loved: collecting interesting things and reading lots of books. Tesev are the interests he continues to love.

    His disinterests have endured all this time too. For instance, he still has no interest in performing enterment. I’ve always thought that Chris and I would make a great vaudevillian-style comedy team. His extremely dry humor cracks me up. He would be the straight man, delivering very funny lines without breaking a smile. For contrast, I’d be only too happy to ham it up a bit.

Alas. Even after all this time to reconsider, Christopher Stephens still has no interest in show business.

Jan's Vision

 

Jan was ambitious.  She strove hard for increased status, money and respectful acceptance of herself and her family.

Jan urged Bob to vye for more lucrative drafting assignments.  Perhaps she urged him to go back to college and finish the engineering degree their family and the war interrupted.

Bob didn’t want to vye. He was satisfied with his engineering work and he liked having time for his solitary hobbies too.  Jan kept trying, but never could change him much.

I’ve always thought that Jan was born a generation too early.  She had energy and drive.  She was smart and determined.  She was eager to take on the world.

Had she been my age in the 1960s and 70s, instead of her age then, she would have been a dynamo in the women’s liberation movement.  Her picture would have been on the cover of Ms. magazine.  She had that kind of dynamism. But she was too early.

Jan had been convinced all along that Chris was a brilliant young prince.  When Chris was seven or eight, she heard about recruitment to the Quiz Kids radio program.  Her prince would be perfect.  She filled out a questionnaire and Chris was called in for an interview.

The first time he was on the program, he got tricked into answering.  He hated it.  He didn’t want to go back but Jan talked him into it again.  At his second appearance on Quiz Kids, Chris resisted their tricks to get him talking.  He kept to himself all his clever answers to the natural history, native American and mental mathematics questions.

Jan was disappointed.  Chris preferred to climb trees, read books and track forest animals rather than earn savings bonds and compete on radio.  It was similar to his father. Bob preferred art and building large motorized model airplanes out of balsa wood rather than concentrating on big-buck  contracts.  

Jan didn’t give up on her vision though.  She took good care of her family.   She made sure that Bob and the boys had healthful, tasty meals.  She took the boys to the library every Saturday and church every Sunday.

Her family was growing.  Jan was pregnant again.  She liked the idea of having three children.  Many years later, Jan told me how lucky she felt to have married Bob when they were both young, and to have had three pregnancies that resulted in three children.

When she said it, the phrasing seemed puzzlingly odd.  It took a few minutes to realize she was talking about infant mortality.  She felt lucky that all her infants survived.

I was young.  I took successful pregnancies, with Western medical care in modern hospitals, for granted.  As it happens though, only Jan’s first two sons had the advantages of a hospital.  Both were born in California and Jan’s parents were nearby.

Things were different in Chicago.  The family was managing in the dreadful apartment, but just before the new baby was due Jan got the mumps.  She wouldn’t be allowed in the maternity ward at the hospital.

On May 17, 1950, the doctor came to the apartment on Agatite Street. Chris doesn’t remember anything about the birth except that he and Gregory were not allowed anywhere near their parents’ bedroom.

Afterwards, there was a tiny little brother, Matt.  Jan’s family was settling into Chicago.

Agatite Street

 Fortunately Jan found housing for her family.  Unfortunately it was a horrible little basement apartment.  It was dank and dark and rats scuttled around the kitchen at night.  Chris could see them.

Chris and Gregory slept in a windowless room off the kitchen.  A half door could close the bottom of the doorway but the top half remained an open “window” into the kitchen.  Activity there - whether human or rodent - was viewable from the bedroom.

Though un-ideal, the Stephens family made their home in the apartment on Agatite Street.  

In the autumn, Chris started school.  He was six years old.  This was his first formal school experience.  He started first grade in a local Chicago public elementary school.

Although he was a kid with a keen appetite for information, school was not for him.  First grade was large, noisy and confining.  The teacher was too busy with desk work to pay much attention to the children.

One morning, early in the year, the teacher passed out a pile of elementary-level books and told the children to look them over.  “Trade with another student when you finish each,” she told the students.

Chris knew how to read but for most of the children this assignment amounted to ‘turn these pages and look at the pictures’.

Chris obediently read the books.  He came across a word he didn't know.  He brought his book up to the teacher who was busy at her desk.  She looked at the small kid with an earnest face.  

“Yes?” she asked impatiently.  She was utterly disgusted when Chris asked her the word.  “Oh good grief,” she said.  “I’m not here to tell you words.  Go back to your seat.”

Chris was puzzled.  His mother had always encouraged him to learn new words.  Chris told his mother about the episode when he got home from school.

Jan was enraged.  The next day she came to school with Chris.  She marched into the main office and expressed her extreme disapproval of Chris’ teacher’s attitude.  To no avail.

Shortly after that, Jan pulled Chris out of public school and enrolled him in the National School of Education in Evanston.  This was a different story.  Classes were small.  It was a school to train teachers and there were several bright and eager teacher trainees in each classroom.  The school advanced Chris 1.5 grades.  They helped him with words he couldn’t figure out reading.  They had plenty of books for him.

Chris read everything he could about animals.  He liked the natural history part and he also liked the fictionalized, anthropomorphic stories about friendly badgers and adventurous tigers and interfering geese.  A year or two into his stint at the National School of Education, Chris also developed an enthusiastic interest in North American Indians.

Just a kid, Chris became something of an expert in both fields.

Chicago 1949

 Jan had long since packed up the San Diego house for the move to Chicago. She was ready. She was impatient.

During the long wait, Jan took care of her sons, visited her parents, took things out of the suitcases to use, and repacked. She might have fumed a bit too.

Chris and his brother, Gregory, played outdoors in the sunny San Diego pre-spring.

Finally Jan had waited as long as she cared to. She decided that Bob didn’t have what it takes to get living quarters for them. That job required grit and gumption. Jan was just the girl for it. She had grit and gumption aplenty.

She made arrangements. Bob sent her money for the train and Jan got the tickets. She gathered up her sons, her suitcases and that good supply of grit and gumption.

Probably Jan’s parents took them to the station. Chris would have waved goodbye. It was his birthday. March 31, 1949.

Chris turned six years old on the day that he and his mother and brother left San Diego for Chicago. It was an eventful day. Chris was interested in the train and the views out the windows. Six was a good age and the train was a good adventure.

Chris’ brother, Gregory, was two and a half. He made his own adventures. It took about three days rackety-clacking along the tracks to get to Chicago. Jan had her hands full.

Finally, they arrived. It chugged into the Station, probably Union Station. I bet Bob met them there to help carry luggage and children. He brought them to the hotel where he’d been staying. He’d arranged for a second hotel room with a communicating door between.

Jan was very happy to have the family all together, but she was also eager to have them in a proper apartment. She got right to work, apartment hunting. She searched the newspaper for ads. She brought the boys all through the city, tracking down housing leads. She looked for apartments during the days while Bob drew plans for constructing buildings.

The post war housing shortage turned out to be appallingly real. Jan wore out shoes and optimism, searching.

One weekend day, the family took a break. They went down to the beach at Lake Michigan. They walked about eight blocks to the city’s edge to get there.

The lake, the Great Lake, was a deeper blue than the sky. Like the Pacific Ocean the Stephens family had left, the lake extended all the way to the horizon. Water met sky.

Chris and Gregory played on the sand and splashed at the water’s edge. The boys and their parents relaxed on the springtime beach. It was such a nice break from weekday labor that they went back several times.

Weekday labor also continued. Bob went to work in a drafting office. Jan pored over newspaper ads and brought the boys on buses and long walks looking for apartments. When they were at the hotel on weekdays, the boys found ways to entertain themselves.

In May, Chris had been six years old for almost two months and they were still in the hotel.

One day Chris was involved in a project. The door between the rooms was open. His mother was in the other room washing clothes or washing dishes or reorganizing. She was frazzled. Young Gregory embarked on a project too.

Jan came into the boys room and asked where Gregory was. Chris was distracted with his project. “Out,” said Chris.

Jan looked around more thoroughly. “Christopher,”she said more sharply. “Where is your brother?”

“He went out,” said Chris.

“He went OUT? Alone? WHERE did he go?”

Chris looked up at her. “He went to the beach,” Chris told his mother.

Mere frazzle intensified a thousand fold. Jan rushed out into the hall. “Stay right there. Don’t Move,” she shouted to Chris over her shoulder.

Jan ran down the stairs and into the lobby. Her adorable two and a half year old was not in the hall, on the stairs or in the hotel lobby. Jan burst outdoors into the street.

Chicago seemed suddenly terribly dangerous. Trucks careened recklessly. Cars sped through crosswalks. Criminals and perverts skulked in the shadows.

Jan ran breathlessly through the street. She was utterly frantic.

A Chicago policeman intercepted her. “Are you looking for a lost child?” he asked her. “We have him, Ma’am. My partner’s with him - just a couple of blocks down. We got him an ice cream cone.”

Jan might have started crying. I would have.

That night, with all four of them together in the hotel, Chicago thrummed outside the windows. It wasn’t dangerous now. The city was friendly.

Perhaps the family got a little glimpse of their future, together, in a beautiful house on the outskirts of the friendly city - Chicago the Queen city of the Great Lake Michigan.

Louisa Scioscia Stephens, March 15, 2023

Flowers

 

During the first six years of Chris’ life, he often visited his mother’s parents. Chris enjoyed time at his Morris grandparents’ house. They also lived in San Diego closeby, but visiting them still usually entailed an overnight stay. Chris had his own room there.

“Better shut this window before you get in bed,” his grandpa said.
“Why?” Chris asked.
“Wild horses. You don’t want to go to sleep with an open window. Wild horses could gallop right up and stick their heads in your bedroom.”

    Would this be dangerous? Young Chris was slightly nervous, wondering. Chris’ mother rushed in. She comforted Chris and scolded her father.

“Why that’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” Jan told them. “There aren’t any wild horses around here.”

Despite the occasional teasing comments, Chris has nothing but happy and fond memories of his grandfather.

The land around the Morris’ house was dry and sandy. There certainly seemed insufficient growth to sustain wild horses - had there been any wild horses around. Nothing much grew in the dusty soil. Usually.

Rain was scarce in southern California. When rain came, though, water transformed the landscape. Just a day or two later, brilliant flowers covered the earth. All around the Morris house, a carpet of color covered over the ground. Chris was enchanted.

Chris remembers roaming through the wildflowers, selecting the brightest blooms to pick for his grandmother. The stems were so short and soft. It was a challenge to make a good bouquet.

I love visualizing pre-school, curly-headed, Chris soaking up San Diego sunshine. I can see him being quite adored by his grandparents and trotting through post-rain magic, picking flowers.

Louisa Scioscia Stephens, March 12, 2023

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Earthquakes

 Chris was a good tree climber. One comfortable afternoon he was up in a tree. The sky was blue overhead. The sun was warm. He enjoyed the breeze and the dynamic movement of the tree.

Suddenly his mother burst outdoors.

“Chris! Are you fine? Did you feel that?”

He was fine, but did he feel what? There had been an earthquake. It was more noticeable indoors where it had shaken Jan. Chris, in his tree, was oblivious.

That year there were some economic earthquakes as well. The war was over. Chris’ father was able to get work in San Diego as an aeronautical engineer again but it was not steady work. The industry was in its own earthquake of sorts. Demand was volatile. Contracts were temporary and unpredictable.

The demobilization of the war effort deflated San Diego’s economy. As the economy fell in San Diego, it soared elsewhere. Bob got a job offer from Chicago. There was a construction boom in Chicago after the war. Bob was hired as a structural steel engineer.

Chris’ parents decided to make the big move. It would be good for their little family of four. It made most sense for Bob to go out first, start the new job, and look for an apartment. Jan would stay with the boys in San Diego, near her parents, until Bob got a place in Chicago for them.

Getting a place for them to live in Chicago wasn’t as easy as anticipated. Soldiers were streaming back home. They headed toward the big cities, like Chicago, that had jobs.

Every expensive long-distance telephone call between the parents conveyed the same news: Bob’s job was going well but he couldn’t find a place for the family to live.

Days became weeks and the weeks dragged by. Chris was five years old. His father had been away in the army and now he was away for work.

Chris was the little man of the house again.

Louisa Scioscia Stephens, February 20, 2023

Tarantula

 Chris’ family moved to another house. It was still close to his grandparents. This house had good areas for exploration. The front of the house faced the street. There was a backyard and beyond that, a long dirt mound separated the yard from an alleyway.

In this neighborhood, there were narrow alleys behind every house. Garage entrances opened to the alleys. Garbage was picked up from the alley, not the front street.

A beautiful, large eucalyptus tree grew right in the middle of the alley behind Chris’ new house. Cars and garbage trucks and bicycles had to go around the tree to continue down the alley.

Chris liked playing at the eucalyptus tree. He loved exploring along the dirt mound. Though the dirt was dusty dry, the mound was alive with insects and other small creatures going about their business. Chris was interested in that business.

A hole in the dirt mound excited his curiosity. He got a stick. He poked. He wondered how deep it was and pushed the stick in, to measure.

Suddenly a huge spider rushed to the entrance of the hole. She was enormous, much bigger than his hand, much bigger than reasonable. She waved her many hairy limbs, in a largely successful ploy to look terrifying.

Young Chris was startled but fascinated. He realized he’d inadvertently threatened the spider in her nest. Chris pulled back his stick and watched the spider quietly. Finally, she calmed down. Eventually she backed into her hole.

A connection was made. Chris was just a little kid, but he wanted to know a lot more about the tarantula he’d disturbed. He came back to the hole again and again on his backyard adventures. Tarantulas are nocturnal hunters, so she came out only occasionally. Chris observed her.

One time a smaller spider came out into the daylight. A male. Young Chris already knew that the male tarantula was a smaller, more neutrally colored spider. He might have already known that the male took almost a decade to mature to reproductive significance, and that he didn’t come out of his burrow until then.

It was the huge, colorful and fierce female that made the lasting impression.

Seven or eight years later Chris was twelve years old. He lived in Chicago. His school teacher gave the students an assignment to write about something from their own lives. His mother read the first draft.

“You need a dramatic beginning to get the reader hooked, Chris. Remember that time, when you were little in California, and the tarantula sprang out of the ground at you? Why don’t you start by describing that?”

Chris did remember. He rewrote the assignment, opening with that female spider from his distant past. The heroine was likely still alive, even after so many years. She was probably still living in the dusty mound, hunting at night and emerging occasionally in the day to defend her nest. Lady tarantulas are known to live for about 25 years. Chris’ Tarantula would have lived through the rest of his childhood. That memory of their interesting encounter and continued relationship has lived considerably longer.

Louisa Scioscia Stephens, February 06, 2023

1946

The war ended in 1945 - May in Europe, August in Japan. There was enormous relief and celebration.

Bob couldn’t come home until he was officially discharged a year later: May 5, 1946. It was a big event. Chris had turned three just 5 weeks earlier. He remembers a particular moment of anticipation on the day.

During that long time, when the family was separated by the war, someone must have told Chris that he was the Man of the House now. The little man had responsibilities. He was thinking about himself as the Man of the House while he waited for his father to come home. His mother must have been excited and all dressed up. Chris was wearing a coat and matching cap. He walked back and forth in front of one of those big wooden radios, thinking and waiting.

That year was exciting all over the country. All over the world. My own parents married in June of that year. Their wedding, in Portland Oregon, took place 1000 miles north of the recently reunited Stephens family. The families wouldn’t meet for almost 20 years.

His father’s return was not the only big change to Chris’ family. His brother, Gregory Alan Stephens, was born on November 30, 1946.

The young family breathed in the ocean air during those sunny days in San Diego.

Louisa Scioscia Stephens, February 28, 2023

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The Wider World

 WWII

San Diego Area 1943

The marvelous baby Chris was born on the last day of March, 1943. His parents, Robert and Jan, turned 21 that year. They were a couple of smart kids who’d met at the University of Missouri in Columbia. They had married the previous March. They marveled at the incredible little human they’d produced.

Jan graduated in 1942 with a double major in journalism and something else. Maybe business. Bob was an engineering student. He was just short of graduating when they left school and moved from Missouri to California. Jan’s parents had moved to San Diego earlier for work. There was work in the aircraft industry. Bob easily got a job as an aeronautical engineer.

Chris, Jan and Bob frequently visited Jan’s parents in San Diego. It was close to Glendale but they usually stayed overnight anyway. Jan’s half brother, Harry Wisner jr.,had also moved to southern California from Missouri. I imagine frequent family dinners at the Morris grandparents’ home in San Diego. Harry Wisner had married recently also and had a daughter about Chris’ age. They were two little cousins; two young grandchildren.

William and Ethel Morris doted on their grandson. No wonder. Chris was such a bright, lively, curious fellow. He had pale yellow hair, looping in curls like a halo around his head. About fifty years later, Forrest Orick toddled around with that same captivating head of curling blonde hair, charming his grandparents.

In that first year of Chris’ life he was the star. The rising star. Warm sunshine, close family and a happy glow of optimism lit his new little family..

Louisa Scioscia Stephens, February 06, 2023