Jim drove a county plow for thirty-one years. He couldn’t stand an unplowed road, his own least of all.
We moved onto Juniper Court, outside St. Cloud, in 1996. Eleven houses on a private road that curls into a circle, with a field behind it. The homeowners’ association took care of the road, and our first winter, the plow company it hired didn’t show up until two in the afternoon.
The next storm, Jim got up at four.
I’d lie in bed and hear the truck cough in the cold before it caught. Then the scrape of the blade, the beep of the backup. He did the road, then everybody’s driveway, then came in with his mustache frozen and ate four eggs standing at the counter.
He did it for twenty-six winters. He never asked anybody for a dime. He kept a spiral notebook in the glove box and wrote down every storm in pencil. The date, how many inches, what time he started, and the same three words every time: did whole court.
