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Comrades united in a modern-day Battle of Waterloo

Tom Lutz stood no chance. His first clue should have been the forecast. His second should have been that he'd drawn the short straw that put a journalist irate about poor Elgin public services into his snowplow for the day.

An Elgin resident, a veteran of about 10 years working in the water/sewer area of public works and a primary plow driver during winter, Lutz picked me up at my house 1½ hours into a 12-hour shift he'd begun at 7 a.m.

We didn't know each other. When he dropped me off a foot of snow and 8½ hours later, we were like French infantry survivors of Waterloo. Lifelong comrades forged in a losing cause.

We plowed all the main streets in his designated coverage area on the city's near southeast side for a second time and had time to hit most of the residential streets. We were joined by another plow for tandem plowing of main roads, necessary because a lane cleared by a single plow will quickly be filled by slush from cars in the unplowed lane.

"He's like our wing man, then?" I asked Lutz.

"Exactly," he said. "And he should stay tight behind us."

Villa. Bluff City. Liberty. St. Charles. Raymond. Route 25. Again. And again. Mile after mile. Lutz was constantly busy with the radio, steering wheel, push button shifter, parking brake, and controls for two plows and a salt spreader while avoiding cars, pedestrians and garbage carts.

Soon, though, the snow really started to fall, and the day disintegrated inch by snowy inch. You learn Elgin is far more hilly than you knew by plowing uphill in a foot of snow. We plowed dead-ends I never knew existed, one of which we got to know too well when a wheel slipped off the pavement in a tight turnaround and was buried in a sea of mud. We had to be towed out. Lutz was embarrassed. I was happy for the smoke break.

We stuffed down a couple of hot dogs in a pit stop-speed lunch break and rushed back out. But it was like watching from a disabled boat as a hurricane approached. Disaster loomed. A foot of snow is always a misery, but it was made worse by cars parked illegally on snow routes, pedestrians with no recourse but to walk in the street and residents blowing snow into the street right behind us. We were barely moving, but we slid right into a fence at a Shakeproof/Illinois Toolworks parking lot that had turned into an ice rink since our last turnaround there. We hit snow-hidden potholes so big they'd probably be visible from the moon using only a modest telescope.

I told Lutz I felt like I'd become his curse. He laughed.

"This stuff happens."

By 4:30, traffic was a disaster, we'd been delayed by a bus turned sideways and our wing man was stuck blocks away. We were losing the battle. Too many miles. Too much snow. Too little help. And then we heard another call, this one reporting a broken water main. A couple of minutes later, his radio crackled. He was pulled off his snow route to fix it.

"You want to help fix a water main?" he asked.

"Not really," I said. "I think it's time to go home."

He was more than welcomed in my neighborhood, where no plow had touched the street. He blew it open to get me home and cleaned it up with another pass on his way out. He was our hero.

And a guy headed to a water main break 10 hours into a 12-hour shift, followed by another plow shift at 3 a.m.

The city was a mess. Still is, for that matter. But it surely wasn't due to a lack of effort on Tom Lutz's part.

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