Blackbeard Services LLC

About Blackbeard Services LLC

A clipper comes down out of the northwest with no warning and very little mercy, and by the time Capital wakes the streets have been rewritten in white. Blackbeard Services LLC works the other side of that night — plowing drives and lots, clearing walks, spreading salt where the cold has glazed the concrete. Central Illinois snow is a wind snow; it drifts across open ground and piles against the leeward side of everything, so the job is as much about where the snow goes as how it leaves. There is a particular quiet at three in the morning with the blade down and the plow lights throwing orange against the banks. The reward arrives hours later, in the ordinary sound of a car backing out on time.