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.