A cigarette ad from the 1950s. Back
then, people believed that cigarettes actually were healthy, "by
soothing jangly nerves and sharpening jaded minds" (Bryson 69). Source:
www.google.com
In a chapter in his book The Life and Times of the
Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson gives the readers who may or may not know
about the 1950s a detailed account of the time period when he was a child. He
shows that 1950s was an age full of dreams, endearing innocence, and excitement
when people thought about delivering letters via guided missile, people setting
fires on the White House were simply released into the custody of their
families, and atomic bomb testing areas were the hottest tourist attractions. This
was the time period when food, TV, car, and atomic weapon productions started
to grow immensely, and when Disneyland was first opened. During that time when Bryson
was a kid, he had a father who "was a fiend for piling us all in the car
and going to distant places, but only if the trips were cheap, educational, and
celebrated some forgotten aspect of America's glorious past, generally
involving slaughter, uncommon hardship, or the delivery of mail at a
gallop" (Bryson 79). However, just before Bryson's ninth birthday, his dad
decided to go on a winter vacation, something that did not happen so frequently.
Stranger still, the vacation is actually interesting to the point Bryson admits
that "I had seldom - what am I saying? I had never - seen my father so
generous and carefree" (Bryson 84); the family goes to great places like
the Rockies, the lush Imperial Valley, Big Sur, Los Angeles, the beach in Santa
Monica, and to top it all off, Disneyland. Through the use of humor, the author
effectively shows how his kid-self fitted right into the age of excitement and
allows the readers to view the time period through his eyes. Because Bryson
experienced all these events firsthand and because he explains the time period
so vividly, I and the other readers could tell that the author is very credible.
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