Grinnell is a small rail-line town on the high plains of Gove County, its grain elevator often the only thing breaking the horizon in any direction, and winter out here arrives across open ground with nothing standing in its way. HOXIE TANK SERVICE works that same wide country in the cold months, clearing snow off the farm lanes and the short run of in-town streets connecting the elevator, the school, and the houses around it. Wind across this stretch of Kansas can move snow faster than it falls, piling drifts against fence lines and leaving the ground between them nearly bare, so the work is as much about finding where the snow ended up as clearing where it fell. South of town, the chalk country stretches out toward the buttes near Monument Rocks, pale and stark against a gray sky, a reminder of how old and open this land really is. In a town this small, keeping the roads passable isn't a small thing — it's the difference between Grinnell staying reachable and being cut off for a day.