Tracy Yarlott-Davis is coming to town. The Hartford Selectboard has announced her appointment as town manager, beginning in February. A native of California, graduate of Oakland’s Mills College and an auditor for Berkeley, Calif., it sounds like she’s spent most of her time in a state bathed in sunshine. She will soon realize how lucky she is to be inheriting a public works department that might as well have snow as its middle name.
In 1971, I spent a few days on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, and I can assure you the concept of “snow” and “snowplows” is not on anyone’s radar there. Thirteen years later, I spent a year in Eugene, Ore., about 500 miles north of Berkeley, and the concept of “snow” was pretty foreign to the folks there, too. When a surprise 3-inch snow storm hit Eugene in 1984, the city was paralyzed. The government didn’t own a single snowplow and no one seemed to know what a snow shovel was. People went out to the sidewalks with cardboard boxes and used them to push the snow out of the way. Cars and buses simply slopped around on snow-covered roads for a few days until it melted.
Hartford is different. Hartford is in snow country.
I’ve lived on Campbell Street in Hartford Village for 29 years. Campbell Street, like many streets in Vermont, is long, winding and hilly. I’ve weathered dozens of snowstorms, and I’ve never once been stuck on my hill due to snow. That’s because Hartford has a fantastically effective public works department that is not only prepared for snowstorms, it seems to relish the challenge of dealing with them.
When I moved to Campbell Street, in 1992, I was an English teacher at Hartford High School. The students in my classes told me I lived on what they called “Teachers Hill.” That’s because five Hartford teachers lived on this dead end road with about 20 houses that rises 500 feet or so from bottom to top and has a view of the Lebanon airport and the White Mountains beyond.
The scuttlebutt among teachers was that Campbell Street always got plowed first because the Hartford School District was notoriously stingy giving out snow days and the public works department knew the teachers on “Teachers Hill” would need to be at school by 7:15 a.m., no matter how deep the snow or how wild the blizzard.
In other words “Teachers Hill” better be free and clear first thing in the morning.
In the years since, all five of the teachers who lived on this hill, including myself, have retired. So it is “Teachers Hill” no longer. But the plowing is just as timely and effective.
Which is a good thing.
When the pandemic hit last March, I realized that Teachers Hill is now “Essential Workers Hill.” Today, in the houses immediately around mine, there lives a police officer, a pharmacist and a UPS official. Another house is rented by several medical students, who leave at all hours of the night and day for their shifts at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
But even a public works department with a A-plus record like Hartford’s can be outwitted by a 2-foot snowstorm.
One night, the week before Thanksgiving, the snow began around midnight. By 4 a.m., the members of our efficient public works department decided to get a head start by plowing a lane up Campbell Street.
The snow was coming down so fast they would have to come back later to widen the lane, but they could do that before 7 a.m.
But “Teachers Hill” was now “Essential Workers Hill,” and when some of my essential neighbors went to work at 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., they were pleasantly surprised that a middle lane had already been plowed. The pleasant surprise soon turned to trepidation: What if they meet someone coming up the hill with tires a-racing? With only one lane, an uphill car meeting a downhill car would result in one of three things: a collision, a departure into a snowdrift, or the car coming uphill having to back down.
My neighbors crept down the hill before dawn, inch by inch, with their hearts in their mouths. Luckily, no one was coming up the hill.
Which brings me to another point of information for our new town manager: Snow doesn’t realize that essential workers are like Santa — they must deliver in any weather. Hartford’s public works department is always preparing to help Santa’s sleigh get through.
So a hearty greeting to our new town manager. Rest assured, you are inheriting a public works department that knows there’s no business like snow business.
Paul Keane lives in Hartford Village.