The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

I have read two other books by Bryson and enjoyed them but wasn't sure I'd like this, probably because it was about being a child in the fifties (my childhood experiences were in the seventies) in Iowa America (I'm in Yorkshire, England) however I shouldn't have doubted his talent for relating life experiences to just about everyone.

I laughed out loud at his father's out of character taking the family to Disneyland as well as the motley crew of childhood relatives and friends he describes.
He could actually be describing any of our childhoods, from teenage crushes, the hierarchy of a gang of mates, Saturday morning cinema, comics and school. Which ever western country you grew up in you no doubt learnt to read from a book where 'Father' always wore a suit and 'Mother' a frilly apron and everyone said "look" at the beginning of each sentence!!

As well as being informative about 1950's America, it's a really entertaining read for those who like to look back happily on their childhood.

This is a humorous walk down memory lane for anyone who grew up in the 1950's. It may have more appeal to males, but is generally relevant enough for most Boomers.

Bill Bryson has long distinguished himself as a gifted writer with a knack for entertaining us as he takes us on his travels around the globe. So he does, as well, in his memoir, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," although this time, it is time travel back to the 1950's. It is very much a window into the time in which he--and I--grew up, a retrospective for Baby Boomers. He captures it perfectly, and were it not for the fact that his childhood was in Des Moines, it just as well could have been mine, in Chicago. I found myself chuckling with familiarity at his memories, which parallel my own in so many ways, from penny candy to reversible jackets, and from air raid drills to dentist drills--sans novocaine. His sense of amusement, cynicism and even awe at that which went on around him, along with his wry observations of the family he grew up in, has no doubt been seasoned by his age, maturity and reflection, but in many ways, it is also an unfiltered look at a simpler time, with the perspective of his years burnishing, rather than altering, what it was like to grow up in mid-twentieth century middle America. I recommend "Thunderbolt Kid" highly to all who relish the chance to sit down and savor what could just as well be their own family album, in words that could just as well be pictures. A thoroughly enjoyable and magical read.

The only difficulty I had in reading this book was extracting it from my wife. This book has Lake Wobegon's optimistic take on growing up in a small town, and was a pleasure to read.

It is set 5-10 years early than my own childhood, but nearly every page resonated with forgotten memories of growing up. Our fascination with anemic toys, naive view of other kids and especially the opposite sex, parental tyranny, joys, experiments with alcohol, and tedium of visits to the relatives and summer vacations - it is all here.

Even the few interspersed, dead-serious send-ups of our foreign policy fiascos of the time like the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, and the space race were cast with an unerring aim for accuracy and surreality.

I recommend Thunderbolts without reservation.

"Getting into the strippers' tent would become the principal preoccupation of my pubescent years." - Bill Bryson in THUNDERBOLT KID

"Essentially matinees were an invitation to four thousand children to riot for four hours in a large darkened space." - Bill Bryson in THUNDERBOLT KID

As I mature gracefully, reading the coming-of-age reminiscences of others that grew up about the same time I did - the 1950s - becomes an absorbing leisure activity. Perhaps I just need to supplement my failing memory with theirs. In any case, several fine volumes of the genre come to mind: Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood by Susan Allen Toth, Sleeping Arrangements by Laura Shaine Cunningham, When All the World Was Young: A Memoir by Barbara Holland, and Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin. As you may have noticed, all four of these are by female authors who are recalling their girlhood. On the other hand, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID, by Bill Bryson, is all about boyhood. And, as I think you'll agree, boys are an entirely different species from girls. I should know as I used to be one of the former. For example, boys have a propensity for shenanigans that would elicit an "Eeeuw!" from the gentler sex, as the following passage on Lincoln Logs, of which I myself had a set, illustrates:

"What Buddy Doberman and I discovered was that if you peed on Lincoln Logs you bleached them white. As a result we created, over a period of weeks, the world's first albino Lincoln Log cabin, which we took to school as part of a project on Abraham Lincoln's early years."

Or this regarding the elementary school's space heaters:

"The most infamous radiator-based activity was of course to pee on the radiator in one of the boys' bathrooms. This created an enormous sour stink that permeated whole wings of the school for days on end and could not be got rid of through any amount of scrubbing or airing."

I'm virtually certain that Susan, Laura, Barbara and Doris never did either.

Bill's recollections otherwise ran the gamut of those of any kid of either sex from that era: family vacations, the first televisions, favorite TV shows, the nature of contemporary comic books, toys, soda pop and candies, parents' occupations and eccentricities, Mom's cooking, the specter of The Bomb and Godless Communism, drop and cover drills, Saturday afternoons at the movie matinees, the National Pastime (major league baseball), the State Fair, Dick and Jane books, visits to Grandpa's farm, paper routes, strange relatives, and Best Friends. Oddly, there's no mention anywhere of a family pet. Is it that he never had one? How is this possible?

Then, of course, there's the budding fascination with sex that includes the discovery of Ol' Dad's secret stash of girlie mags and the unfulfilled, feverish desire to see play pal Mary O'Leary nekkid.

As in the author's other books, his ability to tell the story with a wry and self-deprecating wit is unmatched by any contemporary writer that I've read with the exception of Barbara Holland. Both are national treasures.

Bryson's young adventures took place in Des Moines, Iowa, a much different environment than the Southern California in which I had mine. But, there's a degree of similarity that transcends region so long as that region lies in the U.S. of A. One of Bill's nostalgias in particular that I wouldn't have recalled in a million years but is oh, so true was:

"Of all the tragic losses since the 1950s, mimeograph paper may be the greatest. With its rapturously fragrant, sweetly aromatic pale blue ink, mimeograph paper was literally intoxicating."

It's in the nature of the aging human to recall previous times as so much better. Nowadays, as we're inundated with rampant political correctness, discredited heroes, and the pathetic likes of Paris, Britney and Lindsay, I can look back and say about many things, as Bill does:

"... I saw the last of something really special. It's something I seem to say a lot these days."