READY FOR SOME CHANGES One of Brentwood's Old Timers Remembers How it Was
	NOVEMBER 2005

by Reddie Prewett
Photos by Russell Byrne

While growing up in Clarksburg, California I was a flaming redhead. A comic once asked the question, “Why do redheads marry meek men?” The answer turned out to be, “They don’t always. The meekness sometimes comes later.” I had a good laugh at that joke.

I don’t think Ed Prewett was meek; he spoke his mind when he needed to do so. But he had a quiet spirit and did a lot of good things for the community in both Antioch and Brentwood without trying to get recognition for his service. People who knew him knew that he never did anything to get glory or gratitude; he served the people of East County simply because it was the right thing to do.

Loving and Living in Old Brentwood
My name is Mary Alice. I was introduced to my husband, Edward, in 1947 as “Reddie” and I’ve been telling people that I’ve been “ready” ever since. Ed and I met on a College of Pacific tour of Death Valley during Easter Week. Our parents went along as chaperones. I remember that Ed had salt and pepper black hair and sported a big UC California belt buckle. He seemed too “smart” for me, but there was a full moon that week and I guess some of the things they say about full moons are true because we met the day before Palm Sunday and were engaged on Good Friday. We remained constant companions for that entire week and decided to keep the relationship going “for as long as we both shall live,” which turned out to be 57 years.

Ed Prewett passed from this earth a year ago last January. When the cancer was diagnosed the doctors said he might live four months, but he died in three weeks.

That Easter week in 1947 was as full of romance as two people could have traveling in a caravan with their parents through Death Valley. We journeyed to Death Valley in 56 cars and slept on the ground. The men slept on one side, the women on the other, and married couples in the middle. Back in those days we didn’t get the two sides mixed up, like might happen today, but I remember that Ed loaned me his coat as we sat around the campfire so I wouldn’t be cold.

After the week was over Ed went back to UC and I returned to the College of Pacific. My mom saw how things were and said, “Just finish the semester as best you can.” By the end of that summer Ed got his diploma and became licensed to sell insurance and to do accounting. He then came to my house with the question, “How would you like to go to Connecticut?”

We went to Connecticut on our honeymoon, Ed went to school for nine weeks to learn to be a broker with Traveler’s Insurance, and when we got back we started business in the old family ranch on Loan Tree Way that his grandfather had built in the 1880s.

In 1948 Ed built the building where Casey’s Travel is today. We built the office and lived in a little miner’s shack in back. He was doing insurance business and I was raising kids. We ended up with three children.

During the depression Ed and his family lived at the Arbor Service Station right where Lone Tree Way crosses the railroad tracks. Pappy farmed the area and Grandma Prewett managed the little restaurant and service station. They built the house from lumber taken from an old Brentwood school.

The Prewetts had originally migrated with other families from Rich Hill, Missouri. The Williamsons, for example, came from that area. They built the big yellow house that’s still on Loan Tree Way and farmed the area that is now the Williamson Ranch subdivision.

Grandma Prewett came out here to work for a telephone company in Antioch and met Pappy when he lived in the big house on Lone Tree. Ed’s Aunt Becky & Uncle Lander built the house on Lone Tree where I live now, but they both passed away before I came into the picture. We moved to this house in 1954. Pappy & Grandma Prewett moved into another house on this same property.

Grandma wanted a pool to help her arthritis. She built the pool and grandpa subsequently installed a picture window so he could observe the bathing beauties. They were wonderful people! I can look at the house and that pool and still remember their voices and their laughter.

Seeing the World
Ed got his first taste of travel when he spent three weeks on a troop ship bound for battle in WWII. He fought at the Battle of the Bulge and came home as a decorated War Hero. The war that had brought death to millions of people eventually served to bring some of the survivors together because Ed made a number of trips back to visit the areas he had known as a soldier. During those visits we made a lot of friends and kept in touch with them.

One of our European friends was a man named Maurice Delaval, a citizen of Belgium who was a self-taught expert about everything having to do with the Battle of the Bulge. Ed had begun corresponding with Maurice because of Ed’s connection with the Cub Magazine — a publication of the 424th Infantry Division.

One day, out of the clear blue sky, Maurice called us with a very specific question, “How can you get to the Grand Canyon without renting a car?” The answer turned out to be, “Just call the Prewetts!” It turned out that Maurice had been invited to speak in Chicago to a reunion of the Seventh Armored Division and wanted to see the US while he was here.

Maurice flew into Las Vegas and we gave him a tour of the Grand Canyon that was really grand — with Bryce Canyon and Disneyland thrown in for good measure. Actually Maurice took care of all the expenses and even arranged for us to have back-stage passes into Walt Disney’s private quarters. Disney wasn’t there in person, but his spirit seemed to be hanging around.

Ed and I always liked to travel. We had a Swiss foreign exchange student, named Dorothy, who spent her senior year with our daughter Jo. We visited her several times. Switzerland is a beautiful country. We visited a tea room where they kept cows. They were making cheese and fed us some of the whey. The order of their feeding was “First the visitors; then the pigs.”

Ed had his first bout of cancer in 1964, which scared everyone, I guess, and prompted Pappy to say to Ed, “When you get your affairs in order let’s take a trip together.” He thought Ed would select something like Pismo Beach, and almost dropped his pipe when he said “Let’s go to Europe!” They actually spent two months traveling through Belgium, France, Germany, and Portugal. They caught the returning flight from England’s Heathrow airport. That was in 1964. Pappy passed in 1978 and Ed lived another 25 years.

Winds of Change
I got a Vocational Nursing license in 1967. I had wanted to do this for a long time but Ed kept asking, “What do you want to do that for?” However, after his bout with cancer he said, “It might not be a bad idea.” It was just something I wanted to do. I worked as a nurse at Delta Memorial Hospital for a few years and then did some private duty nursing for a few summers. I was Camp Nurse for a few years at a Methodist camp at Jackson Meadows Reservoir above Truckee.

The original family property was divided between Ed and his sister, Virginia Dallas — the road and the school in Antioch are named for her, and that area was part of her property. Some cousins living in the Bay Area had property on the south side of Lone Tree, where Deer Valley Plaza and the high school are.

Our part was on the side of the road where the water park is now. Eight years ago we sold the land to the City of Antioch to build the Prewett Water Park. Ed wanted the road signs to say “Prewett Family Water Park,” but that never happened.

They call me Reddie and I was always ready for fun. When Jo was six months old a group of us put on James Thurber’s The Male Animal at Liberty High. There was a part written for a black maid, but they made me a Swedish maid. In 1978 the high school asked me to play the grandmother in the musical Pippin. I played other small parts in a Brentwood theater group. I had a great time playing a drunken matre‘d in Cabaret. More recently I was involved in a group of seniors called Cardiac Capers. We put on a benefit for Delta Memorial Hospital and I sang, “I Could Have Danced All Night,” walking around the audience and kissing the tops of a bunch of bald heads.

I still live among walnut trees — the last vestiges, I guess, of the former sprawling glory that was the Prewett Ranch. Edward’s grandfather planted these trees and harvested them until his passing.

In a few years this will all be subdivided. Mayor Swisher told me himself that it was going to be a lovely subdivision. I know that it’s typical of old people to moan and gripe about change and to be always mooning around about how things were in the old days. But I’m not sad about any of this; its time to move on and I’m ready to go. I’ve got barns full of stuff, however, and have no idea what I’m going to do with it all.

Life has been great! Parts of it were tough, but much of it was wonderful. Ed always said in the later years, “I wish my dad and grandpa were here to see all the changes.” He never had a desire to keep things the way they were; changes are coming all the time. We might as well embrace them as to complain about them.

Someday my kids are going to look around at the unbelievable things that Brentwood and Lone Tree Way will have become and will say, “I wish Ed and Reddie were here to see the changes.” I’m sure they’re going to be wonderful!