NORTHAMPTON — Jose Diaz bounced down Hatfield Street perched behind the wheel of an orange Ford F-550, snowplow scraping the pavement.
He was well into hour 7 of his shift at the Department of Public Works, clearing roads since 7 a.m. Tuesday. Diaz, 55, didn’t know when he would clock out for the day. That depended on when the snow stopped.
“Sometimes I get home and I’m just kinda whopped,” the 27-year DPW veteran said. “But it’s just part of the job, you know.”
For storms like these — the type that governors warn of days in advance, the type that close down offices and that send crowds to clog grocery store aisles — the DPW cranks up as others wind down.
Richard Parasiliti Jr., superintendent of the highway division, said 48 plows hit Northampton roads on Tuesday.
Crews started pre-treating pavement at 4 a.m. and started moving snow at 7. He said the same people would likely be on the clock until after midnight, with plenty of breaks, hot food and soup mixed in. Parasiliti said he’s worked for DPW for 28 years.
“It doesn’t get any easier as you get older, but I’m still doing it,” he said.
Diaz has a few stories from his days behind the wheel during snowstorms. Last year, a guy on a four-wheeler came out of nowhere while he was plowing.
“He didn’t have no lights on or nothing,” Diaz said. “I almost clipped him with a plow. The cops came looking for him, but he was gone.
“The last thing I want is to hit someone.”
A few years ago, he said, he got into a fender-bender with a van that was coming down the road as his plow stuck out of the intersection.
Driving around in the snow is risky business, even if you are a professional. In Longmeadow Tuesday, a DPW worker was killed when a train collided with his truck.
Diaz said he has about 10 streets on his route. He plows the main streets first, then the side streets, some of them dead ends. He goes over the streets multiple times each sweep through his route, and might plow the route three times in a day before a final round to clear the streets for good after the snow stops.
Diaz sees some of the same things every snowstorm. Inevitably, people get stuck.
On Tuesday, outside the Citgo gas station on Locust Street, a silver Honda sedan was stuck in a snowbank. The driver was not pleased, throwing his arms up and banging on the trunk. His front bumper was busted, lying off to the side.
“That’s not good,” Diaz said.
The next time he approached the intersection, a snow-caked Honda spun down Locust.
“If you go easy, you’ll get out but if you step on it like that you’ll just spin your tires,” he said.
On that same street, a Hyundai Sonata was stuck in the unplowed entryway to a store.
“I don’t get why people go into these places where they’re not even plowed,” Diaz said.
Some residents watched, helpless, as Diaz rumbled down their streets, hurling snow into the paths they had just cleared.
“I don’t know why people don’t wait,” he said. “They should wait.”
One woman stood on her driveway watching Diaz go back and forth down the street, pushing snow clumps onto part of the driveway she had just shoveled.
He was just doing his job.
“Some people are nice,” Diaz said. “Then you got others that just give you bad looks. … I just smile.
“What’re you gonna do, right?”
Jack Suntrup can be reached at jsuntrup@gazettenet.com.