Come December, dusk lands on Battle Creek by five, and the Kalamazoo runs black between banks of white where Riverside Drive follows the bend. Premier Lawn & Snow works the hours on either side of that early dark — opening driveways, clearing lots, pushing snow back to where it belongs before it can freeze into something worse. A plowed drive is a small mercy: the car goes in, the groceries come out, nobody stands in the road with a shovel at nine at night. Salt where the slope demands it, a shoveled path to the door, and the porch light doing its job again. That is the whole ambition, repeated every storm until March lets go.