Maybe it’s because we’ve been missing our customary snowstorms this winter that everyone in water aerobics class agreed that the storm of early last week produced a memorably beautiful snowfall.

And maybe because we’ve been missing our customary snow, some of us were grousing about road conditions: “Route 5 between Albany and Bethel – the 13-mile forest – is just terrible.”

Over our way, slick roads made for slow going early last Tuesday, but my meeting wasn’t canceled and the school buses rolled. Crawling along behind a snowplow on Route 2 made me realize how little I knew about keeping roadways open through winter storms.

Back home, I got on the phone.

Craig Gammon who, with part-time help, plows and sands 35 miles of roads in Canton. Last Monday he put in 14 hours, 12 on Tuesday, and a full day Wednesday repairing the truck in anticipation of another storm on Friday.

“It isn’t fun … you never know what a storm’s going to do,” he told me.

When he’s not the Canton road crew, Gammon farms.

Mexico has “just under 30 miles” of roadway to plow and maintain. But “we have 5 miles of sidewalk,” Mexico’s highway department chief, David Errington, explained. It’s “a whole lot different than a country road.”

Errington has been on the job for 13 years: “I like my work.”

Gammon got to work at 3 a.m. last Tuesday. Errington and his crew got going around 4:30 a.m. They can complete one round in three hours. Most storms require more than one round of plowing and sanding. The rest of the year, Mexico’s highway crew keeps busy building and maintaining roads, “…mostly maintaining because there’s not a lot of money for building.”

In contrast, Rumford’s plow-and-sand operation is major. Pam Duguay laid it out for me: The town has eight snow plows, some with sanders, one sanding truck that does the main drags (Hancock, Congress, Waldo), three pickups with plows for parking lots, and a sidewalk plow.

“We’re saving $4,000 a storm,” Duguay said, explaining that instead of making another run to haul snow off The Island, the new “pusher” shoves it out of the way.

Andy Russell’s winter crew of 22 (eight part-timers) is assigned to nine “runs,” among them Sticky Town, Smith’s Crossing, Virginia and South Rumford. “A run takes maybe two and a half to three hours,” Russell said.

The crew usually makes multiple runs to plow, sand and tidy up 79 miles of streets and roads. Long, hard work.

When next I hear the rumble of the snowplow in the pre-dawn hours and pull the comforter closer, I’ll remember how long Craig and Dave and Andy and their crews have been up and be grateful to them.

Linda Farr Macgregor lives in Rumford with her husband, Jim. She is a freelance writer and the author of “Rumford Stories.” She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].