Perspective Is Everything

In the parking area, a photographer pulls her gear from the back of her car. A second woman stands nearby. She must be the one who hired the photographer, because she’s holding a perfect little baby in her arms as she explains, “So now we’ve gotten past that.”

The photographer nods, shouldering the heavy bag, and they advance toward the beach entrance. A young man has been impatiently pacing, waiting for them. His lanky frame, dressed neat as a pin, forced to be ready for picture day, turns and kicks at the sand. Not with curiosity, not with affection, but with not knowing what to do with himself.

I think about the ensuing photographs. Perspective is everything.

My neighbors’ houses have been under construction ever since they were first finished. For three years running, there are some massive renovations going on next door. Right now, one is in the process of tearing off all the formerly rustic siding and replacing it with tarps and plywood. Another neighbor, for the second time in as many years, is removing the majority of its shingles and recontemplating the roof line and railings. A large portion of the windows are boarded over.

Were it not for the joyful music that the carpentry crews play, an onlooker might assume the flag lots were hit by a Category 4 hurricane.

The last potatoes we need to dig are for storage. Monday begins frosty, so we’ve got to wait for it to warm up.

The carpenters are halfway through their morning, prying the siding and underlayment from the entire house — they are about a third of the way up the facade, standing on scaffolding, when we make our way into the adjacent field. Just like we watch the carpenters, and wonder what on earth they could be doing, the carpenters likely think the same of us. They turn and watch when they hear and see us, a procession led by the tractor — towing the enormous potato harvester, the old Army truck trails behind, awaiting direction. It idles and lurches a little as it crosses the headland. Two employees trail the machines, and when the harvester is in the row, they ascend the steel ladder to the pick-out platform.

Knowing the truck will catch up, the tractor operator doesn’t wait; he lowers the harvester’s point and engages the machine to dig: five different drives, plus a massive fan to carry the potatoes from the dirt hills to the eventual truck bed. The sound we all hear now is turning sprockets. Spuds pour in front of the two “pickers” and are carried along a wide rubber chain as the workers grab the rocks and clumps of dirt off the conveyor. The potatoes pass out of reach and ascend the lifted boom, while the accompanying truck, whining in low gear, manages to catch up.

The tractor operator nods as he makes eye contact with the truck driver. He lowers the boom, a hydraulic adjustment that completes a gentle arc, and the potatoes begin to pile into the truck’s bulk body.

The carpenters watch for a while. A minor dust cloud envelopes the machinery. Depending on perspective, under the clear and cool October sky, either one or both forms of progress — that of endless construction or that of row crop farming — might seem fickle, even futile.