January in Paramus gets down to essentials — bare oaks, salt-white streets, and a cold that arrives sometime after dinner and does not really leave until March. White Winter Plowing works the middle of that, plowing driveways clear, opening walkways to the door, laying salt where the ice sets up in the shade. The heavy stuff tends to fall between midnight and four, so the machines run in the dark and the job is done before most of the borough has looked out a window. There is a real satisfaction in that arrangement: the driveway is simply clear, and nobody had to think about how it happened. Winter here runs long, and it goes easier when somebody else is out in it first.