Al Crivelli never tip-toed around tenderfooted conservationists.
When anyone spoke up on behalf of the stuffed deer mounted on the walls
of Cheda’s Garage, Crivelli rejoined with language they were likely
to understand. "They taste good, they're high-protein, low-fat,
and they're organic."
Crivelli, who began working at Cheda’s in 1957,
retired last month. After 49 years on staff, he was even more of a fixture
at the garage than the deer trophies along the walls.
Garrulous and friendly, Crivelli walks with a rolling,
confident gait, and nods or waves to nearly everyone he sees walking
along Main Street in Point Reyes. He is opinionated and not afraid of
offending listeners, but his provocations are more the result of mischievous
good humor than spite.
Around the hydraulic hoist where he once worked, Crivelli’s
few choices of decoration are left intact. An enormous elk antler towers
on a wall above a "Sportsmen for Bush" election sticker. An
American flag is tacked to a shelf beside the red tool chest.
Cheda’s Garage is in many ways a landmark of
simpler times and older values. From behind its bay doors, Crivelli
witnessed Point Reyes evolve from a conservative farming community to
a tourist destination. In that time, he said, he had stayed much the
same. "An old country person doesn't change his mind much."
If one thing is constant, according to long-time employer
Sonny Cheda, it is Crivelli’s love of telling stories about the
way it used to be.
Early Days at Cheda’s
Crivelli moved to Point Reyes in 1951, when he was
fourteen, to join his father after the failure of his mother’s
second marriage. His father was the "black sheep" of an immigrant
family of Swiss dairy farmers. His father had settled down to managing
the Grandi Hotel and its restaurant with his second wife, after working
as a mountain lion bounty hunter, commercial fisherman, and Navy submarine
welder.
As a teenager, Crivelli remembers playing softball,
or basketball inside Toby Giacomini’s barn. But more than anything,
he remembers the freedom of being able to hunt and fish wherever he
liked.
In 1957, Crivelli began working weekends at Cheda’s
Garage to help pay his way through junior college courses in engineering.
When his father died shortly thereafter, Crivelli began to work full-time.
Continuing school on top of work proved too difficult. "I probably wasn't
ambitious enough to get in the rat race in the city to finish engineering.
I was content here."
At Cheda’s, Crivelli prepped new cars when they
arrived and did tire, suspension and lube work on cars that came through
the repair shop. Cheda’s was a full-service Chevy dealership selling
pickups and full-sized sedans to mostly conservative local families.
Crivelli remembers the excitement of the first Corvette arriving in
Point Reyes, sold to Dorothy Coster of Inverness in 1960.
Crivelli has been partial to Ferraris, however, ever
since a 1955 visit to the company’s factory in Maranello, Italy.
He cherished for many years a tour pass signed by Enzo Ferrari himself.
It used to be that you could tell if a parked car
belonged to a tourist by checking the ignition; locals never bothered
to remove the keys, said Crivelli. Once, an out-of-towner mistakenly
drove off to Santa Cruz in Crivelli’s pickup. Left behind was a
nearly-identical 68 Chevy with a camper-top. Crivelli had no choice
but to drive the other truck for the week it took to straighten out
the mistake.
Ranchers herded off
Change arrived with the National Park Service. "The
Park came in, and most of the ranchers went out," Crivelli said.
"As far as I'm concerned, a farmer is a better conservationist, because
if he doesn't take care of his land, he's out of business."
A younger generation of organic farmers and ranchers
has won Crivelli’s respect. Grass-fed beef, he said, is "a
damned good business."
But Crivelli is less optimistic for the future of
working men being frozen out of the local economy. "With the cost of
housing, what middle-income family can afford to live here?"
He and many of the friends he knew growing up have
been able to stay because they inherited homes they could not otherwise
afford.
The culture of Point Reyes changed with the steady
stream of tourists passing through town. Many later settled in the area.
"There’s probably more people now from New York than from
California," Crivelli joked.
"The older you get, the more you wish it could be
like the old days, but it can't."