Thunderbolt Kid: a Fifties Memoir
Humorist Bill Bryson Recalls his Childhood in Des Moines, Iowa
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is humorist Bill Bryson's side-splitting memoir about his sheltered but happy childhood in Des Moines, Iowa during the 1950s.
Award-winning author Bill Bryson's memoir will be particularly enjoyed by anyone who grew up in the United States in the 1950s, a time when people got excited not only about the likelihood of nuclear annihilation and the threat of Communism, but about alien invaders and the conquest of space. (It was commonly thought that there were civilizations on Mars and Venus, and that wars with other planets were just around the corner.) There were worries closer to home of course, such as the widespread polio epidemic. But Bryson reports that he grew up, as many children did then, sheltered and happy. “It was quite a wonderful position to be in really. I grew up in possibly the scariest period in American history and had no idea of it.”
A Need for Superheroes
In spite of his innocence, Bryson seemed to recognize, subconsciously at least, that the world, in its precarious state, would require superheroes like those who filled early comic book pages and television shows. When he discovered an old green jersey with a golden lightning bolt across the front in his basement, he decided it endowed him with special powers: X-ray vision, invisibility on demand, phenomenal strength, various astonishing cowboy skills, plus the capacity to walk and fly upside down across ceilings.
When he added to his costume a Zorro sword and whip, a Roy Rogers vest and boots with “jingly spurs,” a Batman flashlight, Davy Crockett coonskin cap and Sky King neckerchief, he was ready to take on any adversary as the Thunderbolt Kid (a name his father playfully gave him after helping him up a short stairway, because he was so weighted down by heroic gear). Bryson used his X-ray vision (which he later renamed ThunderVision) primarily to look under women’s clothing and to zap annoying people off the face of the earth.
Civil Defense in Schools
In the Cold War era, civil defense sirens sent children scrambling for cover on a regular basis. With characteristic drollness, Bryson describes how school officials thought an atomic attack could be survived by crouching on the floor under a tiny wooden desk. Skeptical about the success of such a response, he asked his father if Des Moines was in any genuine danger from the Soviets. His father replied cheerily that if a bomb hit the strategic air command center a hundred miles away in Omaha, they would all die from fallout “before bedtime.”
Concluding that the drills at school were pointless, Bryson decided to refuse to participate in them. He recalls how this small rebellion infuriated his superiors and brought into question his patriotism. “My own disgrace was practically incalculable. I had embarrassed the school. I had embarrassed the principal. I had shamed myself. I had insulted my nation. To be cavalier about nuclear preparedness was only half a step away from treason.” He brilliantly captures the naïve optimism of the period, along with the conformity that was often expected of people.
In this memoir full of entertaining anecdotes of Fifties popular culture, Bryson brings to light a decade that many people today are nostalgic for—a lighter hearted and less cynical period in American history. But after reading his account, one may well speculate if it might not be better, in the end, to be a little less happy and a little more aware of dangerous political realities.
Random House/Broadway Books 2006, ISBN 978-0-7679-1936-4
