My grandma told me she sat on the bank of the creek and watched them bury this line the same year they buried John F. Kennedy. Those steam shovels turned up arrowheads by the dozen.
-- Lily (chapter 1)

Importance: Here, Lily and Karen tell Helen about the old pipeline on Helen’s property. Lily’s reference to her grandmother illustrates the age of the pipeline and creates a link between the pipeline entering the ground and the death of John F. Kennedy. By harkening back to her grandmother, Lily creates a folkloric intergenerational continuity which gives her the authority to tell Helen about the pipeline. By evoking her memory of her grandmother, Lily accesses the same knowledge that her grandmother had. This shows the importance of intergenerational storytelling in the community. Then, Lily briefly mentions the arrowheads turned up by the steam shovels, a reference to the Indigenous peoples who lived on the land...