The Gutter Man

About The Gutter Man

West of downtown, Centralia's older neighborhoods climb into the hills overlooking the Chehalis Valley, high enough that the fog filling the valley floor most winter mornings sits below the rooftops instead of over them. The Gutter Man works those hillside streets, plowing driveways and clearing walks where a night's snow slides off a steep roof onto the path below and refreezes into something more solid than what fell in the first place. This crew clears the driveway first, then works back along the walk to the door, breaking up the ice a roofline dumps onto the same stretch of pavement every storm. From up here the whole valley spreads out below, tracks, mill stacks, and river bend, and getting these driveways open early matters before the fog burns off and the rest of town notices the snow at all. The Gutter Man serves the hillside neighborhoods west of downtown Centralia.