Ells

About Ells

January on the boardwalk belongs to almost nobody — a few walkers, the gulls, the ocean going gray-green under a low sky. That quiet is the season Ells works, clearing snow across Ventnor City while the summer streets sit empty and the year-round blocks still have to get somewhere by eight. Plowing and shoveling on a narrow island is partly about knowing where pushed snow can go and where it absolutely cannot. Walks come down to the concrete, drives come down to the blacktop, and salt goes into the shaded strips where ice outlives the noon sun. A town at its quietest still deserves to be passable by breakfast.