The old highway still runs through Benld, and the town it made keeps its short blocks, its wide yards and its long view out over Macoupin County farmland. G & L Services & Son works both ends of that year — mowing, trimming, edging and cleanups while the grass runs hard from April through October, then plowing, shoveling and salt once the fields go bare and the wind crosses them unbroken. Autumn is the turn: leaves down inside a week, the last cut set a little lower, one set of equipment traded for another. Snow this far south often comes wet and heavy, the kind that has to be moved early or not at all. Getting a drive open before sunrise on a gray Benld morning is a small, finished piece of work.