Mighty Clean

About Mighty Clean

Long before Sidney's Main Street storefronts open for the day, Mighty Clean is working the block in the dark, plow blade scraping down to the old brick pavers while a Union Pacific train works the rail yard a few streets over, its whistle carrying easy across the cold. The crew's other work is cleaning—storefronts, offices, the kind of job that starts before anyone else is around—and a snowstorm just adds a colder version of the same instinct: clear it before the town needs to see it. Cheyenne County nights run bitter once the wind drops out of the west, so the work moves fast, walk to walk, lot to lot, before hands go numb on the shovel handles. By the time the first pickup trucks start easing down Main Street, the sidewalks are bare and the crosswalks are cut clean through the drift at the curb. It's a strange hour to be the only one awake in a town, but someone has to make the morning easier for everyone else.