Snowfall is silent. Until it's not.

In the last days of January, people in central Arkansas watched as falling snow softened the world outside their windows. Roads disappeared beneath white layers, and familiar sounds faded into a hush. For a time, the storm seemed almost gentle.

The steady cold ping of ice against windows carried through the night. Snow layered over ice and ice over snow, forming dense slabs that clung to rooftops and branches. We were lucky the power stayed on, and our unpredictable tankless water heater--oddly installed on an outside wall in the garage--continued to work, though it often quits when temperatures plunge.

On Jan. 29, as we rolled up into warm balls underneath a fluffy comforter, a thunderous crash around 3 a.m. awakened our household. Our two little dogs, ever vigilant, bolted out through their dog door onto the small porch along the side of our North Little Rock house. Curiously and unlike them, they quickly returned and re-assumed their snug positions on the bed.

It was clear that they knew something but were unwilling to share what they discovered out there. So Philip grudgingly rousted himself and shuffled out the porch door. His reaction was loud and incoherent. So I came out too.

Sturdy wooden railings surround the porch to keep the dogs safe. During the night, several large slabs of snow and ice had slid off the neighbor's roof and landed with enough force to break roughly 35 feet of railing. Heavy chunks lay scattered across the porch like debris after a small avalanche.

The dogs could have bolted straight into the winter wonderland beyond the porch. Being wiser than that, they retreated to their beds. After surveying the damage in the dark, we closed the dog door and tried to return to sleep, unsure what daylight would reveal.

Morning confirmed what we suspected.

Clearing the porch was a stubborn job. The ice chunks were heavy and slick. Piece by piece, the slabs were hauled aside until the porch finally re-appeared beneath them.

With the railing gone, new escape routes had opened for the dogs, so we rigged plastic webbing to block the gaps until a proper repair could be made. The temporary barrier worked well enough, but it was obvious the next step would be finding someone to rebuild the railing.

That search brought back memories of another house and another repair crew.

At our previous house in Hillcrest, we relied on Fix-it-Quick, which offered a wide range of handyman services. The house was built in the 1950s and needed more work than we first imagined. Over time we repainted black walls and ceilings, removed raccoons from the attic, pulled up worn carpet, refinished wood floors, replaced broken windows, repaired the backyard fence, and eventually redid the kitchen with new appliances.

There were many other projects along the way.

At first I hesitated to take on so much work, but Gary Ragsdale, the owner of Fix-it-Quick, gave a simple response: "We can do this. Let's do this."

Months later, thanks to the skilled and friendly crew, the house had become a place we were proud to invite people into. Trusting the professionals had brought relief, comfort and a sense of pride in our home.

(Fix-it-Quick still exists today, though it now focuses primarily on appliance repair.)

We lived in that Hillcrest house for 20 years. When it began to show its age again, we decided to build a new home near Argenta in North Little Rock. The house works beautifully for us, except for the temperamental tankless water heater and, now, the broken porch railings.

For a while it seemed our days of having a trusted repair crew might be behind us.

Finding handymen is not as easy as it once was. I rarely turn to social media, but a plea posted there produced a friend's mentioning of a local company called Luck Be a Lady Rentals and Repairs (https://www.facebook.com/p/Luck-Be-A-Lady-Rentals-Repair-LLC-100095463937450/). When I looked them up, I learned that Sydney and Wintersage Red Horse had become the first women to win the "Best Handyman" category in the Arkansas Times' Best of Arkansas poll.

Considering that women make up less than 11 percent of the construction workforce nationwide, the recognition stood out. In a field dominated by men, their success is unusual and encouraging.

Within a few weeks we had an estimate, and the crew arrived exactly when they said they would. The job moved quickly. By the time they finished--a day ahead of schedule--the railings were rebuilt and the porch looked as if the storm had never touched it.

The worksite was spotless when they left. They even returned an unused piece of lumber and refunded the cost. The dogs approved of them as well, perhaps not surprising for a crew that shares their own home with seven dogs.

As the last piles of snow quietly melted from the porch, I found myself thinking about the strange silence that settles over the world during a storm, the way it can make a house feel both isolated and exposed.

Yet the quiet isn't truly empty.

Beneath it lies a network of people who show up when something breaks: neighbors, relatives, skilled workers with trucks full of tools and the knowledge to put things back together again. For years that role had been filled by Fix-it-Quick. Now another crew had stepped in.

A lot of us rely on in-laws, neighbors, apartment maintenance workers, and others who can wield a hammer and saw and know a thing or two about plumbing. After a diligent search, I could have found one of them to take on our project. But thanks to a network of women with similar needs, I have the support I never thought I'd find again.

Karen Martin is senior editor of Perspective.

kmartin@adgnewsroom.com

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