It crossed Kansas and Oklahoma , then paused at Arkansas , gathering assorted nastiness. Next day, fat and monstrous, it rumbled up the Mississippi Valley . Finally, over Illinois the storm unloaded, almost paralyzing the state with blizzard winds, freezing temperatures, and a ten-inch snowfall in twenty-four hours. At the airport, the ten-inch snow had been preceded by a continuous, if somewhat lighter, fall. Now it was being followed by more snow, whipped by vicious winds which piled new drifts-at the same time that plows were clearing the old. Maintenance snow crews were nearing exhaustion. Within the past few hours several men had been ordered home, overfatigued despite their intermittent use of sleeping quarters provided at the airport for just this kind of emergency. At the Snow Control Desk near Mel, Danny Farrow –at other times an assistant airport manager, now snow shift supervisor-was calling Maintenance Snow Center by radiophone. "We're losing the parking lots. I need six more Payloaders and a banjo team at Y-seventy-four." Danny was seated at the Snow Desk, which was not really a desk at all, but a wide, three-position console. Confronting Danny and his two assistants-one on either side-was a battery of telephones, Tel Auto– graphs, and radios. Surrounding them were maps, charts, and bulletin boards recording the state and location of every piece of motorized snow-fighting equipment, as well as men and supervisors. There was a separate board for banjo teams-roving crews with individual snow shovels. The Snow Desk was activated only for its one seasonal purpose. At other times of year, this room remained empty and silent. Danny's bald pate showed sweat globules as he scratched notations on a large-scale airport grid map. He repeated his message to Maintenance, making it sound like a desperate personal plea, which perhaps it was. Up here was the snow clearance command post. Whoever ran it was supposed to view the airport as a whole, juggling demands, and deploying equipment wherever need seemed greatest. A problem thoughand undoubtedly a cause of Danny's sweating-was that those down below, fighting to keep their own operations going, seldom shared the same view of priorities. "Sure, sure. Six more Payloaders." An edgy voice from Maintenance, which was on the opposite side of the airfield, rattled the speakerphone. "We'll get 'em