Now I know...

Now I know why our street got plowed early last winter, and seems to always get plowed early. It seems that someone who was very high up in the last governor's staff lives on my street. Since the local (county) government is of the same party as the last governor, he still has some pull. I spent awhile last winter puzzling over this, since there didn't seem to be a good reason for our (non-through) street to get plowed early.

Same thing happened while I was growing up - we had a county legislator who lived on our dead end street, and we always got plowed early. It's obviously an independent of party sort of thing - it was one party in my old home town, and the other one here. Some things never change, I guess. On the plus side, it means that we can always get out to the local supermarket.