Lanni using a John Deere tractor to pull a beach rake through sugar sand near Pier 60 while cleaning Clearwater Beach early one morning. Photos: Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times/TNS
They come into work and find a moonscape. At 5.30am when day shift clocks in, the beach is still dark – dark enough that, when you first come upon the sand, it seems to stretch infinitely beyond the headlights of the heavy machinery.
That is the light they work by; that and the soft glow from the hotels and, some mornings, the moon itself still tacked up to the sky.
