Winter reaches Bloomington on a northwest wind that has crossed a hundred miles of open field before it ever finds the courthouse square. Austin's Snow Removal and Decorations works the small hours, when the old courthouse dome is lit and the streets belong to nobody yet. That means plowing drives, shoveling walks down to the concrete, and laying salt so the first car out in the morning never has to guess. There is real satisfaction in a clean pass — the blade set right, the pile stacked where it won't block a sightline, the walk cut square to the step. By the time McLean County wakes up, the work looks like it was always that way.