​If I were a painter, I could capture the moment. A young woman, a mother perhaps, perhaps younger, slight, wearing a flowered shirtwaist dress. She is leaning against a fencepost and her feet are hidden by the dry grasses. The perspective is distant, the figure suggested, her dress and hair pulled hard to one side by the wind. She seems to be bracing against the fence, against the sudden gust. She has one hand in her hair, forgetting her skirt.
 
On the other side of the frame, a man sits on a concrete step in front of a dilapidated structure, perhaps an old tool shed. He is long-limbed, lean, wearing blue jeans, a leather jacket, and cowboy boots. He holds his hat, which he was wearing a moment ago, against his long slim legs, stretched out in front of him. A longish piece of his hair, dark with a slight wave, perhaps uncombed, perhaps mussed by the hat, lifts in the wind. He is darkly handsome, a Western man, concentrating, squinting, as he stares at the girl. His gaze is unflinching, razor sharp, penetrating her secrets. His lips part.
 
Enjoy this moment for it catches the essence, the seductive stare, the girl, conscious of being watched. Nothing more passes between them, just the acknowledgement of her prettiness, his desire, her thrill to be seen that way for one brief moment out of an ordinary day of work.
 
Now superimpose the Gas-a-mat on St. Francis Drive, a Subaru, not a fencepost, and Sam Shepard the actor, famous, handsome, knowing it, waiting on the step outside the carwash. The year? Possibly 1986, the windy month of March. I was that young mother holding my hair instead of my skirt while I pumped my gas. He got a glimpse of my stockinged legs, and his lips parted.
 
Sam Shepard, dead at 73 in the summer of 2017. Thanks for the thrill.