CLEARWATER BEACH, Fla. — They come into work and find a moonscape. At 5:30 a.m., 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.
It’s in these lonesome pre-dawn hours that Clearwater’s beach beautification team does some of its most important work — dumping trash, clearing detritus, raking the sand into a clean, smooth plane. Clearwater Beach is the crown jewel of a tourist economy that draws millions of people every year, and many of them expect it to be postcard-perfect.
