Americana and days gone by...

I bought a book a few weeks ago by an American expat living in Britain named Bill Bryson.

I'm a big fan of Bill Bryson as he seems to possess a synergetic combination of both American enthusiasm combined with wry British wit from his adopted home.

The book was called 'The life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid' and recounts his days growing up in mid-west Des Moines in the 1950's. Whilst parts are obviously more familiar to those who grew up in that country, it is a universal narrative of youth that all of us can relate to wherever we were.

He tells of the innocence of youth and the era where children had lolly-rolling escapades at character-filled giant old movie theatres, of arcane Department stores with Eagle-eyed elderly sales ladies just waiting to pounce on little boys using pens and papier-maché pellets as blow guns from strategic hiding places on the wooden mezzanine floor. Of trips to Burger joints and long finned cars and sodas and music that just jumped with positivity.

Of comic books of all types of super heroes (and ocassionally 'zapping' his annoying older sister with his 'laser-vision'!).

He strikes a sober note in one chapter reflecting on the shoe-box multiplexes we visit today, the sanitised, compartmentalised shopping experience, the safety warnings on everything it seems now from dental floss to a cup of coffee, cars that all look like they were squeezed from the same tube of toothpaste and how we now run to lawyers looking to lay blame instead of accepting to take responsibility.

I couldn't put the book down as he took me back to those days and the innocence and promise and excitement of the 1950's.

Bill Bryson said he had the best growing up experience in those golden years a kid could ever have and compared to the complexities of today's world where kids are forced to grow up at age five, and wouldn't trade it for the world.

I'm inclined to agree with him.