Selvin's Outdoor Living

About Selvin's Outdoor Living

The first real December storm usually starts in daylight, gentle and pretty over the rooftops, and by three in the afternoon the streets have gone quiet and white. Selvin's Outdoor Living is out in it, plowing driveways, shoveling walks and steps, and laying salt where ice likes to form along the shaded north sides of West Chicago houses. One pass is rarely the end of it — a storm that runs all night earns a second visit, because a drive cleared at nine means nothing at six the next morning. Steps and mailbox aprons get the same attention as the pavement, since those are the places a person actually puts a foot. It is heavy, cold work with a very simple result: a household that can leave when it needs to leave.