Dad

Dad drove plow for the county road commission thirty-one years. When it snowed, which up here is, you know, half the year, he'd get up at three-thirty in the morning. I'd hear the truck start out in the yard and the scraper going on the windshield, and then he'd be gone till supper. Sometimes later.

He wasn't a talker. He'd come in and wash his hands at the kitchen sink with the Lava soap, the gray bar, and sit down and eat and that was about it.

But every road in that county was open by six a.m. and he took that serious. People would wave at him.

I didn't understand it then. I thought he was just quiet. I think now he was just tired.