Chouteau Township is bottomland: flat, wide, and laced with canal and levee roads that catch the wind straight off the river. When snow falls here it arrives on that wind, and by three in the morning the drifts have already found the same low spots they always find. Chouteau Township Offices handles snow removal across those roads and lots, plowing, clearing drives and putting salt down where a daytime thaw refreezes at dusk. The reward is ordinary and enormous, a way through opened before the first shift leaves for work. Granite City wakes up and simply goes.