I think Lee, her father, and Bill, her brother, must have pegged me pretty well as love-struck. Looking back I have a feeling that they both knew I wasn't worth a hoot at tractor driving. I had no patience, no endurance and I couldn't steer a straight line to save my soul. It was all sort of beyond me.

But when future father-in-laws and future brother-in-laws are checking out possible future-in-laws it doesn't hurt to put the possible future-in-laws to a test by giving them something they do not like to do and then watching how they handle it.

I drove the tractor around all day and was just finishing the field when it ran out of hydraulic fluid for the lift and I had to walk back to the house to give them a status report. They both looked at me and nodded and then we all sat down and had one of Millie's great meals. After dinner, they released me to go spend time with Carol.

I loved spending time with her. We talked, laughed, watched TV, sometimes we smooched (don't tell our kids), and many times we went for a walk or a drive.

One Friday night we went for a walk down her dirt road. We walked a couple of miles down it and then turned around and walked back, The hours seemed to pass like minutes. Getting back to the house it was nearly 11:00 PM and her folks were getting ready to turn in for the evening. They were a bit surprised when we told them we were going to go for drive.

We started up my trusty Dodge Lancer, Rocinante, and pulled out onto the county road. It was March and the air was a little cool but the stars were out and it was a beautiful moonlit evening. We drove down her road for a couple of miles, we weren't in any hurry, then turned onto another road, then another and another until we were many miles from her house.

We came to a county road which I knew led back towards the road she lived on. She knew the road and as we went passed a farm house, she said that sometimes the road got muddy in the springtime and became difficult to drive on. She was right about this. About a half mile past the farm house we came to a nasty looking stretch that had deep tire tracks in it. The spring thaw was in progress, and it was pretty swampy looking. I thought it was passable. Rocinante and I had been through lots together and he had never let me down.

A few minutes later, when we were deeply buried in the middle of the soft squishy place, I wondered if perhaps Rocinante deceived me about his ability to get through sticky places.

Carol and I sat there in the car for a few minutes pondering what to do. Then she spoke, "We could walk to the house back there and call my folks." It was late, nearly midnight, and I could not see disturbing Lee and Millie over some little thing like getting stuck. I decided that we would walk back to her house. That was a mistake. We spent most of the night walking. We didn't have a flashlight and neither of us had warm coats. We walked and we walked and walked. It eventually turned from a romantic dating experience into a test of physical endurance. Every now and then we would walk past a farm house and Carol would say that she knew them, they were neighbors and they would let us use their phone. But my foolish pride was up and I would tell her that we needed to keep on walking.

Mile after mile, the night wore on and both of us developed sore feet and tired legs. We finally got to within a couple miles of her house and she suggested we cut across a field and take a shortcut to get up onto a canal bank that went past her folks house. She remembered doing the shortcut when she was a kid coming home from a friend's house. Shortcuts change over the years. We ended up in the bottom of an emptied sprinkler pond, trying to find our way through the thousands of willow tree shoots that surrounded the pond. There were stickers and all sorts of nasty things in the bushes that pulled and scratched as we fought our way through them. It was so unpleasant that we finally had to start laughing about it to keep from sitting down and crying. I was really tired and discouraged but I couldn't let her know it. She was a real trooper of a girl.

When we finally reached her house, she went inside and told her folks what had happened. Then we went and got her brother's four-wheel drive pickup and a long chain. We drove back to where Rocinante was resting in the bog. Mushing through the goo, we tied one end of the chain on to his frame and then used Bill's pickup to drag him back out of the mud. Unhooking him we drove back to Carol's house. It was too late and we were too tired for hugs and kisses. Simple good-byes had to suffice. It was nearly 5:30 in the morning. I had to be at work at 8:00 AM. I was dragging. Carol said good-bye and went in the house to go to bed. I drove home.

I couldn't believe that I had met a girl who had let me get her into such a terrible mess and then graciously trooped along with me doing things the hard way to get out of it. She was truly a jewel, and I was a fool. Well, she still spoke to me afterwards and we courted and dated and we just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary. She is a great person. I loved her then and I still love her today. She is the best of people in my life.