My Daughter Made Me a Dating Profile Without Asking. My First Date Showed Up on a Tractor

I looked out the window.

A woman with curly strawberry-blonde hair and sunglasses pushed up on her head was driving a 1956 Farmall tractor straight into the diner parking lot. She parked it between a minivan and a pickup truck, climbed down and waved at the window like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Every single person in that diner turned around to look.

She came inside, slid into the booth across from me and said, “Sorry I’m late. My truck’s transmission died yesterday. The mechanic says it’s going to cost more than the truck is worth, and the extended warranty expired in March. Naturally.”

“So you drove the tractor,” I said.

“It’s only eleven miles,” she said. “And I wasn’t about to stand you up over a transmission.”

I decided right there I liked her.

We stayed at that diner for three hours. The waitress refilled our coffee so many times she finally just left the pot.

Darlene told me about losing her husband, Roy, to lung cancer. She told me about the year she almost sold the mill because the medical bills had wiped out their savings, and how her grandkids talked her out of it.

I told her about Bonnie. About how quiet the house gets in the evening. About the three widowers at the Cracker Barrel who I’m pretty sure are as lonely as I am but would never say so.

“Men,” she said, shaking her head. “You’d rather die than admit you need company.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

She looked at me over her coffee cup.

“Wendell, you’re sitting in a diner with a woman who drove a tractor eleven miles to see you. Admit it. You need company.”