At four in the morning a commercial lot along Route 6 is the widest, quietest thing in Brewster — a blank white field with the streetlights burning over it. Platinum Paving and Sealcoating spends winter nights turning those blanks back into places people can park: plowing lots and driveways, windrowing snow to the edges where it won't swallow a row of spaces, clearing walkways and entrances, and spreading salt across aprons and approaches. Timing is the whole trade — get in before the first cars, get back out between bands, keep the piles from becoming a spring problem. There is a plain pride in watching a shop open at seven onto a clean lot with nobody thinking twice about it. Snow in Putnam County is an argument with the clock, and the trucks are simply out earlier than the weather.