Many people in this book start it with issues with a certain Mr Marconi. In the recent past, the first person narrator who the world knows as Lucy, despite his being male, experiences a lot of his family's keeping-up-with-the-Joneses regarding Mr Marconi. This is the age of a struggle for affluence in the US - cars are a status symbol people might afford to buy but not use, those new-fangled superstores are driving the corner shops out of trade, family meal-times are starting to disappear, and television has formed recent standards of etiquette - if you receive visitors, do you turn it off to talk, or leave it on as it may be their only chance of watching?