Earl Salt Service

About Earl Salt Service

In Norwood the Raquette River runs black between white banks all winter, and the village square holds its snow like a cupped hand well past March. Earl Salt Service works the cold months here — salting and de-icing walks, steps and lots, plowing drives, keeping the melt-and-freeze cycle from turning a doorway into a hazard. St. Lawrence County cold arrives at ten below and settles in for a week, and it is ice hidden under a skiff of new snow that actually puts people down. Timing is most of the craft: material on the ground before a storm finishes, then back again when afternoon sun works on the drifts and refreezes them by dusk. Norwood Lake stays locked a long time, and so do sidewalks that nobody tends.