Nancy Prebilich of Gleason Ranch in this series recounts her story of what it's like to return home and pick up the family legacy of farming in Sonoma County.
"I am the sailor on horseback! Watch my dust! Oh, I shall make mistakes a-many; but watch my dreams come true...Try to dream with me my dreams of fruitful acres. Do not be a slave to an old conception. Try to realize what I am after."
– Jack London circa 1913
Knoxville, Tennessee, June 2003. I pull close the rolling doors of the storage unit, lock down the hatch of my little U-Haul bumper-pull, and with the stroke of a pen sign off my last contractual obligation that had bound me to the south. It had been five years since I first moved to Knoxville with just a plane ticket stub and a couple of suitcases.
Before that, I had done my time as a burgeoning New York actor/director, living in a cockroach infested storefront apartment in Manhattan’s lower east side. I was the black sheep of the family who fled at age twenty-one to stake my claim on the international stage. First stop… New York City! With modest success, I developed a seemingly impressive resume, leading to an unsolicited phone call one afternoon. A former teacher of mine was offering me a “Get Out of NYC Free” card; three years of paid graduate studies, international travel, apprenticeship with world-renowned theater artists, and an undetermined curriculum of which I could be the author. In other words, an extended paid vacation with a promotional bonus: a Master's Degree certificate. The only catch was that the dream package was only redeemable amidst the smoky mountains and conservative territory of the Tennessee Volunteers. It was a far cry from the granola days of my youth, scented with Sai Baba Nag Champa and spent among the Russian River redwoods and rocky beaches of the Sonoma Coast. However, compared to the grimy clankety-clack of the Manhattan hamster-wheel I was starting to tread, it didn't take me long to learned to shout, "Go Big-O!" But who was this Peyton Manning guy and what was all the hubbub-a-loo about?
During my five years in Knoxville, I became a theater artist with a socio-political agenda. I was out to change the world, one play at a time. State and federal grants sponsored my work with the oldest black theater company in southeast, local labors’ groups, and community activist groups like CPR (Citizen’s for Police Review), armed with video-cam recorders aimed at documenting any and all police activity. I rolled with my crew, marching on sidewalks in protest, sitting on community forum panels and fueling heated debate, attending local fish fries, and spitting my rhymes at the late night poetry slam. Simultaneously, I was flying back and forth between New York, Serbia, and home. One held a security of valuable “industry” connections, one an excitement toward carrying my political art to an international level, and the last…. California, Sonoma County, the ranch, my grandmother… well, the last was my heart.
Life was dynamic, dramatic, and rarely ever dull, but the crux to every travel itinerary always remained: When would I make it home? Voicemails left by my grandmother were treasured like gold. I would save them on the answering machine for months, playing them back, over and over again, whenever I felt the world starting to slip from underneath me. Countless times I found myself whirling in my own solitude, pining for either an answer or a great escape, when suddenly… the phone would ring
“Hello, Nancy. It’s grandma,” as if she had to tell me. “ I was just thinking about you. How are things?"
Tears of relief would suddenly stream down my face. I’d tell her of the latest plots, the characters, the motives, and the climactic conflicts. She’d listen attentively as I babbled, sometimes offering a comment of moderate opinion, “Well, that doesn’t seem right.” But always, in the end, she’d put her faith in me. “ I know you’ll do the right thing. Just try to get along as best you can, and do what’s right.”
My grandmother and I had that uncanny, inexplicable connection, the kind that TV news series would do stories on: A mother burns her hand at her stove in Ohio while her daughter feels the pain… in Texas! If ever there has been a great love of my life, it was the love of my grandmother, Grace P. Gleason. A stoic woman of quiet, yet unmistakably firm disposition; a true matriarchal figure; a woman to whom I credit the foundation and core of my being, and to whom I am eternally devoted.
In the spring of 2003, it was determined that the time had come. At the age of ninety four, my grandmother’s health was deteriorating, and while nothing more than the common symptoms of old age seemed to afflict her, life’s clock was slowing. Her great journey was soon to begin, and so it determined was mine. Now faced with a 2,542-mile drive toward the sunset, I felt a sense of anticipation that was distinctly different from any of my other travels. I was going home… for good!
Twenty minutes on the road and my grand cross-country journey comes to a screeching halt. Five o’clock traffic, hundred degree heat, ninety percent humidity, and a traffic jam so unrelenting that engines were completely shut off for over an hour. My 1990 Jeep Cherokee didn't come equipped with air conditioning, so I relied on my “Aftermarket MarkII-70” cooling system: two windows rolled completely down while traveling 70 mph. A bandana swathed and tied around my head gave me the look of a free-loving hippie chick, braving the open road alone with zeal and confidence. One foot lay on the pedal, and one dangling out the driver’s side window. I was Thelma and Louise, all rolled into one. My hydration system consisted of several frozen jugs of water lying on the passenger floorboard, strategically scheduled to transform into an unlimited supply of refreshing ice water. I was more than content with my primitive accommodations, and with no immediate agenda to bear any weight of urgency, this was perhaps the one and only time I can ever recall being completely at ease… elated, in fact, to be trapped by unyielding traffic. The car next to me strikes up conversation as I pull out a bag of chips from my well-equipped stash of traveler's accoutrements.
"You've got quite the little load there. Where you headed, all by yourself?"
"Home,” I replied, “I'm headed home!”… only 2,528 more miles to go!
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