Kat’s completed her training and started work at Amazon. I’ve spent her first three work days on matters requiring the services of a DvM, a diesel repair shop, and wait for it … a barber college.   Campbellsville is not exactly a prosperous town, but it is a good place to get various kinds of work done at reasonable prices. We’ve found a Dodge dealer who does excellent repair and maintenance work at prices that are almost low. I save our big diesel jobs for Don Franklin Dodge in C’ville. Near as I can tell, they’ve never cheated us.

A couple of years ago the lid to a heavy corrugated box blew across the highway into our 50 mph path and struck the Red Sled broadsides. You wouldn’t think that would do body damage, but it badly bent the chrome trim around the wheel well. I expected to pay at least $100 to replace it, but a C’ville body shop reshaped it into its original form. The shop owner spent nearly half an hour while I watched. He made that chrome look like new. “What do I owe you?” “Ten bucks?” I told him that wasn’t enough, and handed him a twenty. Then he wanted to give me change.

Campbellsville is, by and large, an honest town. Pink regularly takes Heartgard to prevent heartworms and knock out any round- or hookworms she might pick up. But Heartgard is powerless against tapeworms, and Kat diagnosed a full-blown tapeworm infestation. I called a local animal hospital and told them I need something to knock out canine tapeworms; how soon could they see Pink? “Well, how do you know they’re tapes?” The internet told and showed us all we needed to know, and I told her so. “No need to bring her by. Just drop in any time, and we’ll fix you up with a dose that will eliminate them in one treatment. It’s a chewable pill that dogs usually like.” Two hours later Pink had her medicine, for the princely sum of $12.50.

But sometimes, even in low-cost towns, you get what you pay for. A haircut at the School of Cosmetology goes for $5, and students do all the work.   My locks were in dire need of sculpting. My last trim had been two months ago at a franchise shop in Elkins. That purple-tressed barbess (barberian?) cleaned up everything but the sideburns, which I noticed far too much later. Maybe they were just too scary? Anyway, by now my ‘burns were sho’ ‘nuff frightful, but the cosmetology student went after them with courage and vigor.   She disrobed me (Yo, calm down, dawg:  she just unclipped and shook out the barbershop apron) then swept up my clippings.  There stood a ball of hair the size of a young grey cat!   I left thinking she had done a pretty good job, but Kat noticed long untouched tufts below the collarline. The next morning I awakened to an image in the mirror resembling a fat, ancient Butthead.  Like him, I had a pup tent of long, long hair peaked atop my dome.

An hour later that same student repaired my head. This is a good little old town!