Thomaston is built along the fall line, where the Piedmont hills tip down toward the Flint, and its streets carry the long memory of mill whistles and red clay. Winter here mostly means fog in the river bottoms and frost in the pasture gaps — until the year an ice storm bends the pines and glazes every hill in Upson County. SLU Enterprises, Inc. runs the snow and ice clearing for those days: plowing the lots, scraping the drives, treating the sidewalks and steps that keep the cold in shadow. The town is hilly enough that one slick grade can cut a neighborhood off from the rest of its morning. Getting that grade open early is why the trucks go out at all.