Cherry Bomb
If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (1971) by Erma Bombeck: 7 out of 10: This book is a signature cocktail of suburban angst, mid-century domestic absurdity, and unapologetic common sense, shaken not stirred, with a twist of Midwest sarcasm.
Less a traditional narrative and more a curated buffet of observational essays, Bombeck’s book pokes gentle fun at the so-called “idyllic” American housewife experience of the 60s and 70s. The kind with matching dish towels, eternal PTA meetings, and husbands who believed grilling once a month qualified as “helping out.” It’s not a story in the conventional sense, but a sit-down chat with your wittiest neighbor, who has just returned from the grocery store, dropped the roast on the floor, and still wrote 200 pages of comedy gold between laundry loads.
At the heart of this book lies Bombeck’s razor-sharp ability to transform the every day into the hilarious. Whether she’s grappling with malfunctioning appliances, awkward dinner parties, or the Sisyphean challenge of raising children who think clean laundry magically appears, Bombeck brings the kind of humor that’s only possible when you’ve truly lived through the madness.
Her anecdotes are specific enough to be vivid, yet universal enough to hit home whether you’re a 70s housewife or someone who’s just realized they forgot to pay the electric bill again. The characters, namely her ever-patient husband, chronically chaotic children, and assorted suburban archetypes aren’t fleshed out in the literary sense, but they leap off the page rendered in punchlines and pathos.
The Good
Reading Erma Bombeck in 2025 is like slipping on a pair of well-worn slippers: familiar, comfortable, and still surprisingly intact despite the decades. Bombeck was the undisputed queen of the “sensible chuckle,” ruling a humor landscape that has since been paved over by irony and outrage. Her writing, situated squarely in the middle-class domestic trenches of the early 1970s, remains sharp in its own cozy, cardigan’d way.
She was, in essence the suburban Andy Rooney. A chronicler of the petty absurdities of home life who made them feel universal. Her jokes about perpetually tardy husbands, mysterious “fifth children” who cause all household chaos, and tennis-playing housewives in blinding white skirts still land with the rhythm of lived-in truth. The humor doesn’t sting; it nods knowingly. And occasionally, between the punchlines, Bombeck pulls off a genuine insight about the changing role of women, the squeeze of inflation, and the generational handoff of parenting that hits harder than one expects from a syndicated columnist.
The Bad
This is humor from a different geological era. When “apple pie” was both metaphor and meal. Bombeck’s material sits solidly within the sensible chuckle zone. It’s witty, but rarely sharp enough to draw blood. Her takes on feminism, the workplace, and suburban drudgery are delivered with empathy and self-deprecation rather than critique, which makes sense for her audience but leaves modern readers wanting a bit more bite.
Still, the pacing helps. She never lingers too long on a gag, and her rhythm. Half Facebook post fifty years before Facebook and half confessional, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? is breezy and conversational. Even when the jokes feel dated, her timing remains impeccable.
The Ugly
“Ugly” is a strong word for something this relentlessly pleasant, but let’s face it: Bombeck’s world is gone. Her essays belong to the era of rotary phones and percolators, when the worst neighborhood scandal was a mother who dared to go to work. The closing chapters turn wistful, touching on aging parents and the bittersweet cycle of life with surprising grace. Yet that same grace underscores how far away we’ve drifted.
The essay collection, like the syndicated columns it was born from, has no modern equivalent. Caitlin Flanagan comes close in tone, but not in frequency. Blogs replaced essays, memes replaced blogs, and now Reddit threads carry the conversational DNA Bombeck once owned. Hers was the last laugh from a time when the world still wrote letters and read newspapers.
Conclusion
If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? is not a revelation; it’s a reunion. You don’t read Bombeck to discover something new; you read her to remember what it felt like when humor could be gentle without being dull. It’s nostalgia, yes, but nostalgia done right: warm, humane, and quietly honest.
It’s good to visit the past occasionally. I wouldn’t want to live there, but Bombeck makes it a pleasant weekend trip.
Notes on Reading
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I have visited this book before. Well, at the very least I have heard these jokes before. We are solidly in the land of the Sensible Chuckle. And it is a comfortable place.
Now, exactly what kind of cutting-edge humor one might expect from a housewife comic from 1971 is another story. Erma Bombeck (who in my mind I sometimes mix up with Judy Blume of all people) is almost the middle-aged female equivalent of Andy Rooney, and this is high praise indeed. Nostalgia in reading my parents’ books is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, I suspect.
There really has not been a modern equivalent to Erma Bombeck I can think of. The closest I have run into is Caitlin Flanagan, who devotes an entire chapter in her To Hell with all That praising and telling the life story of Erma Bombeck. Alas, Caitlin does not have, shall we say, the publishing frequency needed to be the modern Erma Bombeck. Caitlin is echoing the past. An homage. (I read To Hell with all That not too long ago. I was shocked when I realised I had not reviewed it. Good book. Very much in the Erma Bombeck style. I probably should put something together)
I enjoyed the first chapter as one might enjoy a comfy pair of slippers. We shall see what the remainder of the book brings., I expect more of the same, with perhaps a serious chapter to end it all wistfully.
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Jokes about parents and parenting. I can see why she did a book with Bill Keane. There share the same material. So we get a talk about a mysterious fifth child who is to blame for eating all the candy or leaving all the lights on. She also chats about how her husband is late for everything and, as a relatively punctual person this drives her nuts.
There is nothing here outside of the sensible chuckle zone. Not that I was expecting something else. Still, it is breezy, well-written and doesn’t stay too long on any one subject/gag.
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Erma takes on women working outside of the home in Who Killed Apple Pie. She talks about the ridiculous restrictions on family leave for things like death other than your own, and she talks about the chaos that ensues when the kids in the neighborhood learn there is no parent at your house after school.
Then we have a chapter on the latest trend, tennis. (Think pickleball but with larger courts.). She correctly points out that most people get into tennis for the nice outfits. Women are constantly going grocery shopping in their new white fancy tennis outfits.
She has some fun commentary on the game as well, especially the challenge of picking up the ball in such a way that you do not look like an ape. She then proceeds to have a chapter on how a housewife is a martyr with some funny scenarios. With surprising balance, she does the same treatment at how miserable her husband is at work and the nonsense he has to put up with as well.
Then we have inflation, environmentalism and why one would bring a child into this horrible world. As one neighbor observed “Would you bring a child into a world that would not elect Ronald Reagan?” A quote that will make one immediately check the publication date of the book.
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Erma Bombeck goes over various laws she would like to see. Garlic eaters beware; she has her sights on you. These laws are cute and very family-friendly. Mostly that babies should be allowed to be babies and adults should learn to act like adults. Again, we are in a pleasant, sensible chuckle lane with plenty of nostalgia for people of a certain age.
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Erma gets serious at the end, and that is okay. Not maudlin or anything, just talking about how the child becomes the parent to an aging adult. She writes with clarity and truth from the heart. It is this voice that many of her contemporaries struggled to match and even her modern pretenders, such as Caitlin Flanagan, try to match.
Books of essays were replaced by blogs, which are now replaced by memes, TikToks and Reddit posts. We still have syndicated columnists, I am guessing, but like the newspapers they used to appear in, they are an echo in the past.
It is good to visit the past on occasion. I am not sure I would necessarily want to live there, but it is fun for a visit.