Winter does not arrive politely here; it comes off Lake Ontario in bands, one street buried while the next stays bare, and at two in the morning the plow trucks are about the only thing moving past the dark earthworks of Fort Ontario. ZEL Outdoor Services works those hours — plowing driveways and lots, shoveling walks and steps, and going back for whatever the wind stacks against a garage door before first light. Oswego measures its snow in feet and mostly shrugs about it, but nobody shrugs at a car that cannot get out. So the runs happen in the dark: push, pile, salt the walk, headlights on toward the next address. By the time the coffee is poured the driveway is already open, which is the entire point of the night.