Cottage Home sits just northeast of downtown, a pocket of small frame houses on narrow ground built originally for the workers at a gasworks that used to stand nearby, roofs pitched close together, so close that the season's first dusting seems to land on the whole block at once. The lots there are tight -- barely enough room between houses for one person and a shovel, driveways short enough to clear in a few passes, front walks that run straight from a low porch to a curb only a few feet away. Because the houses sit so close, ice tends to form in the narrow gaps between them where the sun never really gets in, so those spots get checked twice while the open-yard side of the block dries out on its own. It's small-scale work, walk to walk, porch to porch, more like tending a garden bed than plowing a street. Come midmorning, the block turns into a patchwork of bare brick paths and small white yards, smoke rising thin and straight from a dozen close-set chimneys.