Ex 1.3: The Ideal or Just the Idea

In the memoir holy land by d.j. waldie the past of southern California cities is shown through short stories about his life and experiences. It’s interesting to see how different the cities are, such as Long Beach and its neighboring city Lakewood. Lakewood was once built up to be the ideal grid city and as the memoir goes on I saw the little secrets of the town. Although it was thought of as so perfect, waldie talks about the occasional empty house with a dead body in it. I feel like that was the bad side of Lakewood back then.  It’s even a bit scary to think of how often he made the discovery of corpses sound. Even though waldie did notice this, I believe others may have been more oblivious just because of the given status of the ideal city. Presently, I think Long Beach upgraded to compete and has become a much bigger attraction, whereas the bad side of Lakewood just grew and now people see it as a worse community to live in. Luckily, Lakewood can still pride itself on the Lakewood mall as before since it has expanded and remains prominent to the society.

            I feel our society is always looking for organization and the perfect idea. That is why the bad side was hidden of Lakewood for so long. Even the author shows that he looks for the perfect idea. Throughout the memoir, he spoke of different things about his parents. He gave praise to his father for even the smallest things such as being a good driver. Since he talks about their death it seems that he almost wants their legacy to live on as pure and perfect almost like the Lakewood citizens wanted for their town.

            Waldie notices everything in Lakewood that happens and is extremely informed because of his job with at city hall where he often is , “listening to the complaints of residents,” and they, “often begin by telling [him] how long they have lived [there].” (88, waldie).  At this angle, he is informed from almost every viewpoint. As a young boy he was so interested in cities that he created them, “ in the dirt behind [his] house.” (131). Yet when he tells of his older experiences, there isn’t the same kind of delight expressed. Perhaps even his ideal was ruined by the bad he had heard about and seen in work. It makes me question if Lakewood really was an ideal, or if it only set the bar for better ideas.