Weather arrives in Downers Grove from the west, out over open ground, and you can watch it come, the sky going flat and pewter above the stiff grasses of Belmont Prairie an hour before the first flakes reach anybody's driveway. Snow Fighters LLC waits for that and then goes out into it, plowing driveways and lots, clearing walkways and steps, spreading salt on the packed places where a car has already turned in and back out again. A clipper can drop three inches and be gone by dawn, or the wind can swing around and keep it falling all day; either way the route runs until the last property is open. There is a real satisfaction in a driveway cut square to the garage door, apron and all, with the mailbox still standing. Winter out here is long, and the work is simply making sure it never closes anybody in.