ebay, russell chatham, and cheda's garage

Mike is  a careful  follower of Ebay. You never know what quirky things you may find. Russell Chatham is a writer and landscape painter well known to those of us who fish or who are ghillies.

Point Reyes Summer

Cheda's Garage in Point Reyes Station is an old fashion garage, family run for the past 90 years.

We proudly sport Cheda's Garage license plate holders on both of our vehicles which has lead to interesting conversations as we travel around the state.
All of the above came together last Tuesday when we set out for Point Reyes Station to deliver a very obscure immigration paper of Chatham's great uncle that Mike found on Ebay. We knew Russell had a studio in West Marin, and we knew that he knew the very helpful woman at the garage because we had seen them together on a past visit out west. The very helpful woman turns out to be Hillary Cheda and when we stopped in just hoping she might give the paper to Russell she said oh you should just go find him and give it to him directly and she pointed the way to his studio. In today's totally wacky world of mistrust and fear, I found this astonishing that a place exists where someone would do this. I suppose we look honest and without agendas. So on our way out of town to find the studio we actually ran into Chatham himself. And when Mike gave him the paper he was amazed and asked what can I do for you. With quick thinking Mike said "how about a tour of you studio". He said follow me and off we went.

We spent an hour and a half with him talking life, art, fishing and today's world.

Here's Russell reaction to kid's today and their "devices".

This painting is a current project.

This is a collection of his striped bass flies.
We left his studio in complete amazement with a gift of three books from his Clark City Press and smiles on our faces.