The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

I just finished reading The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. I love Bill Bryson’s writing. He has the amazing ability to think up just the right turn of phrase to perfectly convey his thought and make you laugh at the same time.

Normally, I avoid reading memoirs like the plague, but because this one was written by Bill Bryson, it earned a special dispensation and I dug right in. Bryson writes charmingly about the first ten or twelve years of his life growing up in Des Moines, Iowa during the golden age that was the 1950’s in America. He writes about the universe of childhood and the wonders of post-war life.

I’m too young to properly appreciate Bryson’s stories of the fifties. I actually learned a lot about the history and culture of that time from reading this book, and could appreciate the hilarious stories about young Billy, his parents, and his neighborhood buddies. But what I can’t fully participate in, unfortunately, is the nostalgic reminiscing—yearning, almost—for this changing time in our country’s history, when the simple life began to change into a TV-watching, car-buying, productivity-oriented society. Bryson makes me wish I had experienced that time, but I was born much too late to ever understand it fully.

Here’s a passage that made me laugh out loud. And it’s holiday-related, too. This takes place the year Disneyland opened in California, and the Bryson family took an unprecedented road trip from Iowa all the way to the Pacific Ocean:

We spent Christmas day walking on a beach in Santa Monica, and on the day after Christmas we got in the car and drove south on a snaking freeway through the hazy, warm, endless nowhereness of Los Angeles. At length we parked in an enormous parking lot that was almost comically empty—we were one of only half a dozen cars, all from out of state—and strode a few paces to a grand entrance, where we stood with hands in pockets looking up at a fabulous display of wrought iron.

“Well, Billy, do you know where this is?” my father asked, unnecessarily. There wasn’t a child in the world that didn’t know these fabled gates.

“It’s Disneyland,” I said.

“It certainly is,” he agreed and stared appreciatively at the gates as if they were something he had privately commissioned.

For a minute I wondered if this is all we had come for, and that in a moment we would get back in the car and drive on to somewhere else. But instead he told us to wait there, and strode purposefully to a ticket booth where he conducted a brief but remarkably cheerful transaction. It was the only time in my life that I saw two $20 bills leave my father’s wallet simultaneously. As he waited at the window, he gave us a smile and a little wave.

“Have I got leukemia or something?” I asked my mother.

“No, honey,” she replied.

“Has dad got leukemia?”

“No, honey, everybody’s fine. Your father’s just got the Christmas spririt."

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Tags: book reviews memoir fifties Disneyland Bill Bryson