Road Crews

An appreciation...

Watching and listening to the snow plows and maintainers work through this eight inches of snow that much of southern Iowa received on Thursday made me think of a piece I wrote long ago.

I wrote it maybe 15 years ago in appreciation of our road crews who work so hard to keep us safe in our travels. I’ve been in the plows and in the maintainers with the guys while they plow, and while it might seem like the giant machines cut through the snow like butter, they don’t. You feel every bump, every drift, every change in the texture of the snow and ice, and it hammers your body. It’s exhausting and stressful. They have to worry about taking out mailboxes, hitting a guardrail, or even a phone pole. I took the above photo after spending a morning sitting in the plow with the driver while he cleared miles of rock road. This story takes place in the days before Christmas, and it and more like it can be found in my book Deep Midwest, Midwestern Explorations, by Ice Cube Press. If you don’t know Steve Semken and his press, his list of Midwestern, and especially Iowa authors, is second to none.

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The snow hit us just about right, six inches at the most, but hard to measure since the 50 mph winds had the National Weather Service calling it a blizzard, which sounds right to me, bringing us some drifts a few feet deep here and there and other places leaving nothing but bare earth, but timed perfectly for a white Christmas which was just a few days out. And a white Christmas is rarer than one might think, about one in seven years, they say.  And as always, the county road crews started with plows on the hard surface roads at four AM, allowing time for the wind to slow and the snow to finally lay down with the dawn, building some drifts that looked like lapping waves, and others like big fat dragon tongues. The maintainers, or what some call road graders, came out at seven to work the rock roads.  And as always, the guys got to see things other people don’t get to, like red foxes, and turkeys tracking deer, grazing where the deer’s hooves break through the snow.

The day started warm, then cooled, so when the snow came Mike the new foreman told me the rock roads were soft underneath the snow, making working the blades troublesome, the guys on the maintainers wanting to clear the snow off the rock roads for safety’s sake but not wanting to wreck very much of the 680 miles of road in the county by blading too deep into the muck. Rock roads can be delicate, believe it or not, Mike said, and one has to leave a proper crown and a good surface, while trying not to knock any mailboxes down.

And the guys went at the snow again on Christmas Eve, working hard up to dusk to make sure that everyone could get home safe, that drifts were cleared, and that there were two lanes on every rock road in the county. And over the radio I could hear the guys talking more than usual, excited for Christmas coming it sounded like, and pleased that because of their hard work, everyone could get to where they needed, and to get done by dusk, guys who were done with their routes in the south moved north to help where we got the worst of it, but not as bad as Des Moines to say nothing of Ames.

The digital thermometer at the shop said 18 degrees and dropping, and right before dusk Mike told everyone it was time to “head to the barn, the roads were “as good as we’re going to get ‘em,” and for “everyone to have a Merry Christmas.” For some reason as the guys came in and parked and checked their equipment, when done most hung around, not heading home, the camaraderie of the special day and general friendships they had held them in place, waiting till the last guy got in safe.

As they milled about the shop, one voice called out on the radio. “Sorry boys, I’ve got the hammer down, but I’m way out and she doesn’t have much more in her.”

“Don’t worry,” someone replied, “We’ll leave the light on for ya Elmer.”

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I hope you enjoyed this! Remember, don’t crowd the plow, and please take a look at the work of other Iowa Writers’ Collaborative columnists—they are doing amazing things. If you can afford it, please become a paid subscriber to their work. Here we are in alphabetical order:

Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines

Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa

Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politic Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Macey Spensley: The Midwest Creative, Iowa

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona

Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

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