"That Grid Came from God"

Layers of Past Suburbs

“The critics of the suburbs say that you and I live narrow lies. I agree. My life is narrow. From one perspective or another, all our lives are narrow. Only when lives are placed side by side do they seem larger” (Waldie 94)
In context, this chapter seems a bit out of place. Is it linked to the religious tone of the following anecdote, or an illumination the minutia preceding? Though it, of course, works in both of these ways, a more interesting functions is the way it emphasizes one of the themes Waldie develops even further as the passages near an end: Geography and Geology as a function of fate and God.
Specifically in reference to the water supply, the author takes great care in describing the history, makeup and current happenings of the layers of earth below his town. They are what have come before Lakewood, are what support it, and what the lively suburb will eventually become. Just another layer. Just another slab of stable ground. A slab that is part of the natural, inevitable continuation of the world. This plays into Waldie’s religious world-view where we are all a part of an inconsequential, fleeting world whose sole importance lies in its eternal implications.
This is also interesting when one realizes the connection between his description of the subterranean realm and his suburban home. Layers of sediment seem to warrant similar narrative and description. The territorial wars between salt and fresh water mimic those between different factions of the community. The description of the composition as well as the seismic activity that had so far shaped it resembles the exposition of the materials and history of Lakewood. The city is composed of wood frames, gridded streets, and imported lawn. It came into existence by the divine work of three men, while the tectonic shifts are the inevitable work of nature (or, to some, God).
The way he speaks about both types of events with an air of inevitability, maybe even fate. The events in the town, though emanating from individual desires and free will take on the cadence of biblical verse where all happened and was meant to happen. Additionally, the grid descending from God emphasizes the notion that the limited scope of suburban life that seems so “narrow” is in fact part of a divine plan. This current terrestrial incarnation is only another narrow sliver in the more substantial whole of the physical world. When its time has passed, it will be another layer of earth, reduced to its bare components.