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Keeping up with the Joneses
An average American family and how its possessions grew - and grew
Text by John Yemma, Research by John Long and Richard Sanchez
1900
Goodbye, country life
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THROUGH THE YEARS
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1900: Kodak Brownie
'01: ''Hot dog'' coined
'02: Jell-O; J.C. PennEy ''chain stores''; The comic book
'03: ''The Great Train Robbery'' creates demand for fiction movies; Crayola crayons
'04: French's mustard; Ice cream cones; Double-sided phonograph disc '05: The Yellow Pages; Gillette safety razor; Picture postcards '07: Electric washing machine; Tungsten light bulb '08: Dixie cup '10: Gas oven '12: First air mail; Life savers; Oreo cookies '13: Assembly-line Fords; erector set; crossword puzzleS; Portable phonograph '14: Raggedy Ann doll; Morton salt '15: Pyrex, heat-resistant dishes '16: Piggly-Wiggly self-serve grocery store; Hoover upright vacuum '17: Converse hi-tops '19: GMAC auto loans; Dial telephones '20: Wonder bread '23: Canada Dry ginger ale; Neon signs '24: Kleenex; ''the EverReady Hour'' is the first sponsored radio program '25: Frigidaire electric cooling system upgrades icebox; All-electric phonograph; General Motors makes yearly model change; Leica 35mm camera; Green giant '27: pop-up toaster; KooL-aid '28: Avon (calling); Gerber baby foods '29: Car radio '30: rolex Waterproof watches; Twinkies; Scotch tape '31: coca-cola santa claus '32: Kodak 8mm film; Frito corn chips '34: Monopoly board game; Drive-in theater '35: IBM electric typewriter '37: Alcoa aluminum foil '38: Ballpoint pen '39: Kentucky fried chicken '40: Nylon stockings; M&M candies; ''Fantasia'' introduces stereo sound '41: first television commercial; Rice Krispies; Cheerios '42: Kodacolor color print; Tupperware '44: Chiquita bananas '45: A-bomb heralds nuclear age; Volkswagen Beetle '46: Slinky '48: Mcdonald's; Polaroid camera prints pictures in a minute '49: Vinyl LPs; 45 rpm record; Silly putty '50: First credit card, Diner's Club; Electric razor; Nielsen Ratings; Sugar pops '52: Bic disposable pen; 3-D movies and comics; Rolodex; Cinerama; UNIVAC projects the winner of presidential election; TV Guide; Swanson's TV dinners '54: Transistor radios '56: 54 million watch Elvis on Ed Sullivan show; Imperial margarine; Comet cleanser; Raid (insecticide) '57: Frisbee '58: American Express card; Legos; Hula Hoop; Stereo recording is introduced '59: Barbie; Xerox; Boeing 707's fly coast-to-coast '60: Domino's pizza; Etch-a-sketch '61: Selectric ''golfball'' typewriter '62: RC low-cal cola '63: Valium; Zip codes; Corvette sting-ray; Felt-tip pens '64: GI Joe; Gatorade; Touch-Tone telephones '65: Kodak Super 8 film '66: Mini-skirts '68: Big mac '70: floppy disc '71: Philips video recorder; Wang 1200, first word processor '72: ''Pong'' video game; HBO; Sony cassette VCR; Sonys portable video recorder; Nike '74: Post-its; Bic disposable razors '76: Ted Turner delivers programming nationwide via satellite '77: Apple II computer, first commercial personal computer; ''Roots,'' TV event; ''Star Wars'' '78: Magimix food processor '79: Sony Walkman '80: fax; Designer jeans from Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein '81: MTV; Nintendo donkey kong; Nutrasweet; laptops; Mouse pointing device; IBM PC '82: Trivial Pursuit board game; USA Today '83: Swatch watches; Cabbage Patch Kids; first Cellular phone network in US; Airbag in Mercedes-Benz '84: Apple Macintosh; Portable compact disc player; High-quality facsImile; Camera and tape deck combine in the camcorder; A television set can be worn on the wrist '85: CD-ROM player; Pay-per-view channels '86: Cable shopping networks '90: Apple powerbook laptop '91: 3 out of 4 US homes own VCRs, fastest-selling domestic appliance in history '94: Power Rangers '95: CD-ROM disk can hold full-length feature film; Sony PlayStation; Sony demonstrates flat TV set, wide-screen model '97: DVD players '98: Viagra; battery-powered cars; satellite telephones '99: dual air bags in All new light trucks
SOURCES: American Meat Institute; Chronicle of America; FDA; Kimberly-Clark Corp.; The Look of the Century, by Michael Tambini; Media History Project, Professor Irving E. Fang; Mercedes-Benz; National Highway Transportation Safety Board; Soap, Sex and Cigarettes, by Juliann Sivulka
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There was no Y2K worry at the turn of the last century, no fear that the power grid would collapse. That's because there was no juice in most American houses. The Age of Electricity had barely begun.
An average family in 1900 - call them the Joneses - has only a primitive icebox. Other than staples, food is bought fresh - or harvested or killed. A chicken dinner begins not with a defrosting but a beheading. Floors are cleaned with brooms and mops. Clothes are soaked in wash basins, run through wringers, and hung outside to dry. Manual labor gets most chores done.
Mr. Jones rises before dawn and devotes the daylight hours to work, typically laboring more than 50 hours a week. Mrs. Jones has a full day of housework. Grandma and Grandpa Jones live in the same house. Big, multigenerational families are an economic necessity.
The evening's entertainment is a book, a stereoscopic slide viewer, a wind-up phonograph, a card game. Even silent movies have yet to arrive. Outside the small circles of light cast by gas or oil lamps, the Jones house in the evening is dark and quiet.
The United States of 1900 is not a very mobile nation. In the countryside, the Joneses walk, ride in a buggy, or take the train. But in the cities, electric trolleys and subways are beginning to speed up life. With its hustle and grime and myriad possibilities, the city promises something better and more exciting than farm life. The Jones children will become part of the great migration that will urbanize America in the first decades of the century.
They will be joined in the next 10 years alone by 9 million immigrants - Jews, Italians, Irish, Armenians, Japanese, Latinos - who will change the face of the United States, bringing new ideas, new tastes, and new interests to what at the time is an Anglo-Saxon-dominated nation.
Change is in the air even on the Jones farm. The Joneses have seen some of the marvelous inventions that are appearing almost every day: electrified mass transit, automobiles, the telephone. The Kodak Brownie is popularizing home photography. There is a Ford in their future. It is only a few years later, in fact, that the quest for consumer comforts will become so widespread that it will inspire a long-running comic strip by Arthur R. ''Pop'' Momand.
He gives his comic a name that becomes synonymous with 20th-century acquisitiveness: ''Keeping up with the Joneses.''
1950
Baby boom, buying boom
Fast forward to mid-century. This Jones family is basking in good fortune. It owns a Cape Cod-style home in one of the suburbs springing up around cities like Boston. There are several radios in the house. There is at least one car in the garage, a refrigerator and toaster in the kitchen, hot water is heated automatically for a bath. These Joneses live better through electricity.
Clad in gray flannel, Mr. Jones works 40 hours a week. He doesn't notice it at first, but a UNIVAC computer in the office is a harbinger of the information revolution. Trouble is, it has so little memory that in order to save room on punch-cards the dates are programmed in two-digits (''50'') instead of four (''1950''). The Y2K bug has been born.
In 1950, Mrs. Jones works in the home, but Madison Avenue, a newly minted term for the US advertising colossus, is going all out to sell her ''labor-saving'' devices - a sewing machine, a washing machine, an Electrolux vacuum. World War II drew an unprecedented number of women into the work force. Now, five years after the war has ended, one-third of all women are employed outside the home. Most of the good jobs have been taken by men returning from the war, but women are beginning to itch to get out of the house.
Grandma and Grandpa are living on their own back on the Jones farm, since Social Security has gone far toward eliminating old-age poverty. The Jones nuclear family is holding together, though in the decades to come divorce and stepfamilies will explode onto the scene.
Chez Jones is becoming noisier. The year 1950 dawns with only 150,000 American households equipped with a television. A year later the number has grown tenfold. The TV Age is here, and the Jones children are lobbying for one.
In 1950, blacks are still relegated to segregated facilities in many states, and bias against blacks remains common. But the civil rights movement is stirring: Racial quotas have been abolished in the Army, Jackie Robinson is the National League MVP, Ralph Bunche has won the Nobel Peace Prize. The second half of the century will be about a struggle for greater freedom, not just for blacks but for ethnic minorities, women, the disabled, gays, and anyone with a look and lifestyle that doesn't fit into the white mainstream.
The Jones kids are baby boomers. They wear Davy Crockett hats and play with Barbie dolls, but their fervor and excesses will roil America in the years to come. The baby boom beat will dominate taste and consumption over the next 50 years. Right now, they want their Maypo. Years later, they will want their MTV.
2000
Matter, matter everywhere
You don't need an introduction to the Millennium Joneses. They are you, your friends, family, and neighbors. Both Jones parents work outside the home, although both wish the much-touted trend toward telecommuting would make it possible for them to spend more time away from the office.
There's a TV in almost every room, a home computer or two hooked into an on-line service, a couple of cars in the driveway, an ''appliance garage'' in the kitchen jammed with gadgets. Pushed by Madison Avenue, consumer culture reaches deep into every nook and cranny of America - and most of the rest of the world as well. How did people ever get along without a microwave, a food processor, a VCR, or satellite TV?
There is only one child in this Jones family. Large families are not as common as when the parents were young. Mr. Jones is a little worried about how his company will weather the Y2K problem, but he doesn't think it will be a show stopper. Mrs. Jones has been quietly buying canned tuna at Costco. She's a little worried about the power grid, and has recently unearthed a manual can opener. All those appliances will be worthless if the juice goes out. Why take a chance?
Y2K is an apt metaphor for fin de siecle America. While there has been an incredible run of economic prosperity in the 1990s, there are lingering worries about how long it might last. Are things a little too good? Are Internet stocks ridiculously overpriced? Has credit-card debt gotten out of control? Sure, life after purchsing an SUV is really no better than before. But how else are you going to haul all that stuff you bought?
The Joneses have plenty of things, a plethora of amusements, jammed-packed calendars. What they don't have is much time. And even what seems solid may not be. Jobs are plentiful, for instance, but downsizing could come anytime. As for marital relations, Mr. and Mrs. Jones are still going strong, but the little Jones girl knows from her playmates that modern marriages may not last forever. She herself might or might not go the marriage route. Her hero could be Jennifer Love Hewitt. Or Ellen DeGeneres. You never know. It's a diverse world, filled with options.
One other thing: The Jones girl has been chatting with her grandma via AOL's Instant Messenger system. She's learned some interesting things about the family's geneology. Now she's made a decision. She is changing her name back to the original spelling: It was Janowsky in the old country.
2050
New century, new tastes
Welcome to the future. If it was ever acceptable to generalize about the Joneses, about what the ''typical'' American family looks like, it is no longer. The 2050 Joneses (or more accurately, the Ramirez-Joneses) have a divorce or two in their background. And their name isn't necessarily an indication of their ethnicity. They could be Asian-Latino or Afro-Irish or plain old English-English. No single ethnicity is dominant.
The Ramirez-Joneses could be from vastly different religious backgrounds, or be devoted to one old-time religion, or to none at all. They could be married or unmarried, same or different sexes.
They could even be extraterrestrials. By the second decade of the 21st century, NASA had a space station, a permanent moon base, and had human crews on Mars. Human nature being what it is, by mid-century a small number people have been born in space.
And, yes, by 2050 humans can be cloned. It was only a matter of time before scientists perfected the technique. But like a lot of scientific achievements - nuclear power, videophones, non-alcoholic beer - the public still can't quite see the point. The sperm-egg approach works fine in most instances. It's cheaper and more fun than cloning. Plus it adds variety to the human race.
Automobiles (electric) remain popular. Trucks and buses run on natural gas. There are even a few old gasoline burners around. But most business gets done over fiber-optic lines. The Internet is the vehicle the Joneses use to work, shop, read, and entertain themselves. It's no big deal. Like the word ''computer,'' which has fallen into disuse, the Internet is just a background utility. Every appliance is intelligent, monitors your tastes and needs, and orders what it thinks you might want.
It is possible that by the middle of the new century people like the Ramirez-Joneses will have tired of material consumption and will be trying to recapture a quieter, simpler life. Possible, but not likely. Earn-and-spend has been the core of modern capitalism almost everywhere in the world. There are always new products, new ad campaigns, new things to covet.
Take virtual reality. VR has become so good by 2050 that is its own art form. A few techno-geeks have their own VR ''caves'' at home, but the best experiences can be had at specially-equipped theaters not unlike the ''holodeck'' in the ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' TV series of the 1980s. Any scenario can be enacted: a Shakespearean romp, the D-Day landing, ''The Great Y2K Panic'' of 50 years before.
Like all the changes that the 21st-century Ramirez-Joneses have experienced over the years, the latest ones will not be the last. It's a Jones thing: They keep on keeping up.
John Long, Richard Sanchez, and John Yemma are members of the Globe Staff.
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