Steve met Ruth in 1977 as he was walking along a road in the outskirts of the Northern California town of Santa Rosa. She was an attractive, bushy-haired woman in a tank top, digging with a shovel in her side yard. She was looking at him. Along this stretch of the rural road there wasn't anyone else in sight, she continued to look at him.

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He crossed the road towards her, jumped a drainage ditch, walked through tall grass to a low fence separating them and spoke.

She was friendly, and was an artist, a sculptor, working as a sculpture lab technican at Sonoma State College. About himself, Steve said that he was a painter, had graduated as an art major from that college five years previous and asked Ruth about Kay Armstrong, his favorite art teacher. She was Ruth's supervisor and Ruth called her Kathryn.

Steve thought all this was quite a pleasant coincidence because he needed to go out to the college to talk to Kay, since he was now founding co-curator for the Lincoln Gallery in the new Lincoln Art Center, created out of the old Lincoln School. After Steve explained all this to Ruth and they talked pleasantly for a while, he took his leave, saying he'd look for her at the college when he went out to talk to Kay. There was a spring in his step as he continued down the road on his way.

He went to the college in a couple of days. He saw Ruth pushing a wheel barrow filled with clay. Her arms were strong, her big, curly hair framed her shy smile in a most attractive way.

Steve didn't see Kay that day, but did begin to see a lot of Ruth.

Sweat drenched by mid-afternoon, the space between walnut trees opening to a big blanket of ready ground. She worked in the backyard of army barracks duplexes, given over to housing for the marginalized: welfare families of filthy children named Scooter and Anna, ancient alcoholics, biker guys and their spikey girlfriends, just plain odd, and then Ruth and her daughter Heather. Recently moved from the San Francisco Bay Area town of Redwood City, she came to Santa Rosa and Sonoma State University. Ruth studying psychology because a single mother needed a job. Working in the Art Department's sculpture labs because she had to keep art in the mix one way or another.

Back to the yard separated from Hearn Avenue, a country road on the outskirts of an old-fashioned town turning to suburb, by a shakey wooden fence. The two-lane road, streaked morning and evening with commuters taking the back way, was now the quiet ribbon over which grazing cows and gentle sky becalmed. Never a passerby during the day trod. Salt soaked hair sticking to her neck, obscuring vision, caused her to pause. Catching a breath, she leaned on her maddox, having shed to her undershirt in the heat of the day, she felt the tickle of breeze on her bare arms. Gazing over the fence in this moment of gathering, a tall, lithe figure, long blond hair sailing gently over his shoulders, a fellow striding up the road. Ruth, shy pretty much since birth, really didn't know what to do. Practically naked on a public thoroughfare now that someone dared use it in the middle of the day, hiding was impossible, ignoring, too mean-spirited for a small town country road, she braced herself for a how d'ya do.

He seemed brazen loping across the road, leaping the ditch to stand on the bank just over the fence. Said hi, then he wouldn't go away. He was conducting a conversation, with Ruth, a stranger. She was not displeased. They talked about the art they had in common and Kay Armstrong, once his teacher - the best drawing teacher ever - the same Kathryn Ruth worked for in the sculpture lab. The same Kathryn who would sometimes take a seat on the couch in the lab, just to enjoy watching Ruth working a mop over the clay dusted, slurry slogged floors at the end of the day.

The conversation came to a close. Steve Harlow was his name, he was heading to work at KBBF, the local bi-lingual radio station, somewhere near the old airfield around the corner. He said he would be making a trip to Sonoma State to talk with Kay, he'd be looking for her, Ruth, in the sculpture yard. He asked about the hours she worked. She replied. He walked on up the road. She laughed a little to herself as he rounded the bend. Probably wouldn't see him again, never mind, but well, he was nice, friendly. And yes interesting and well her heart did beat a little wildly as she lifted the maddox overhead, just a few more rows of soil to fluff.

Some little time later, lugging freshly mixed clay from one place to another in the sculpture yard, striding like he crossed the road, Steve did indeed meet Ruth again. Once again, she was not displeased.