Four in the morning off the I-75 exits, and the lots are still blank blue under the pole lights. That is the hour Earthworks Enterprises, Inc keeps — plowing parking areas and drives around Gaylord clean and salting the lanes before the first shift arrives, so the day opens as if nothing happened overnight. The piles get stacked where they will not blind a driver backing out, and the crew circles back when the wind fills a lane in again. By six the doors swing open onto bare pavement and the storm becomes somebody else's memory. Winter in Otsego County is measured in hours before sunrise, and a lot of the town runs on them.