The life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Bill Bryson, “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”, Broadway Books (2006) 268 pp.

This is the author’s memoir of his experiences growing up in the 1950s in Des Moines, Iowa.  My brother recommended this book as we too grew up in the 50’s.  If your puzzled as to which brother I am referring, it was the brother that I gave a catcher’s mitt to when he was in about third grade.  I had retrieved a catcher’s mitt from the high school as they were throwing it out for some unknown reason.  I then found a sponge, I forget where, which fit rather snuggly into the glove and, voila! It was like new.  He could now, no matter how reluctant, catch my fastball for hours on end.  But I digress.

Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero; he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

It was a wonderful time when DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you.  (I particularly remember the fun at shoe stores where you could look at x-rays of your foot, brothers’ hand, etc., through the viewer on the machine provided).    All in all it is an enjoyable light reading for a day about a time long past.

My Notes:

Pg. 29:  Dr. Brewster was the most unnerving dentist in America.  He was for one thing, about 108 years old and had more than a hint of Parkinsonism in his wobbly hands.  Nothing about him inspired confidence.  He was perennially surprised by the power of his own equipment.  ‘Whoa!’ he’d say as he briefly enlivened some screaming deice or other.  ‘You could do some damage with that, I bet!’

Pg. 87:  From Time magazine, December 10, 1951: “In Detroit, Mrs. Dorothy Van Dorn, suing for divorce, complained that her husband 1) put all their food in a freezer, 2) kept the freezer locked, 3) made her pay for any food she ate, and 4) charged her the 3% Michigan sales tax.”

Pg. 141:  Mothers also failed to realize that certain clothes at certain periods of your life would get you beaten up.  If, for instance, you wore snow pants beyond the age of six, you got beaten up for it.  If you wore a hat with earflaps or, worse, a chin strap, it was a certain beating, or at the very least a couple of scoops of snow down your back.  The wimpiest, most foolish thing of all was to wear galoshes.  Galoshes were unstylish and ineffective and even the name just sounded stupid and inescapably humiliating.  If your mom made you wear galoshes at any point in the year, it was a death sentence.  I knew kids who couldn’t get prom dates in high school because every girl they asked remembered that they had worn galoshes in third grade.