Thunderbolt Kid

I'm apparently on a Bill Bryson kick. Last week I read Shakespeare: The World as Stage and this week I just finished Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. I think I've read all of Bryson's books now and have enjoyed every single one of them. One of the better humor/travel writers of our times. I learned a lot from the Shakespeare book but I laughed a lot more with Thunderbolt Kid. While Shakespeare took me a couple days to work through, Thunderbolt Kid was gone over the weekend. I couldn't stop reading it.

Bill Bryson tells a hilarious story of growing up in the 1950s in Des Moines. As a Des Moines native myself this book is wonderful for all the great history. I know many of the places he talks about. The downtown Younkers building that he speaks of so affectionately was where I had my first job out of college. And not on the sales floor. I was working up in advertising and got to spend a lot of my time in the bowels of the building. It was an interesting building. Many of the streets he talks about are my current daily commute. (Grand or Ingersoll) Some of the houses he mentions in the South of Grand area are still standing. Some things may have changed but some things (like my love of Bishops cafeteria) will never die.

But the book is not just Des Moines history. This is the story of Bryson's family but also about the outside world in general. His discussion on nuclear energy and our plans for it in the fifties are enough to make me cringe and laugh at the same time. As he puts it, we were apparently indestructable. I guess at one point the government was even looking into rocket mail delivery. This was the time when some of my favorite SciFi writers were really ramping up. Space travel, Mars colonies. Bryson describes all of the scientific fever of the day brilliantly.

The Thunderbolt Kid was Bryson's alter ego in the book. A superhero who develops x-ray vision for the purpose of looking under clothes. (and even removing restricting clothing) The fact that it can vaporize annoying people was just a side bonus. So Bryson goes through the book vaporizing stupid people, growing up, and exploring his city. So much of this book was laugh out loud funny. His stories about his family were odd and wonderful but I could also identify with them. All families are quirky in their own way. One of his closing stories, about a bomb one of his friends built, had me literally on the floor laughing. This book is a love story to a changed city but also a humorous reflection on what it meant to be a kid in the fifties. Well worth a read.