There is a green hour in Joliet in June, just after sunrise, when the air off Pilcher Park still smells of wet oak and the lawns along the old Route 66 corridor have not been touched yet. That is when phil's lawn care and snow removal begins mowing — even passes across the yard, trimming close around fence posts and the mailbox, then edging until the line between turf and concrete is one clean cut. Autumn turns the same streets into leaf work, and this canal town leans toward its short days. By January the mower gives way to the plow: driveways opened, walks shoveled, salt laid down before anyone has to guess at the ice. The same hands, both halves of the year, on blocks they know by name.