West of downtown the White River slows into wide bends before it reaches the dam at Riverside, and on the coldest mornings a skin of ice forms along the banks while the current still moves dark and open in the middle. The neighborhoods that back up to that river -- modest ranch houses, long straight driveways, curbs that catch the wind off the water -- need their own kind of clearing, plow blades set low against gravel and grass edges instead of downtown curbs. A truck works those streets before the school buses start their loop, blade scraping down to pavement, then circles back with a spreader once the sun is up and the melt-and-freeze cycle starts again. Some mornings the fog off the river beats the plow to the street, and the work happens half-blind by feel and memory of where the driveway ends and the yard begins. By noon the block looks like itself again -- bare concrete, white yards, smoke rising straight up from every chimney in windless cold.