It’s an airport; did you not expect noise?

In all things human, there are distinct groups that form around any topic, idea or belief.

At the extremes of each group are the members whose beliefs will likely never change. In the middle stand those whose opinions range from “don’t really like it, but it doesn’t bother me” to “like it, bu

t I can live without it if I have to.”

Examples abound. In politics, we have people who couldn’t agree to pour water on a fire that was about to burn them all to a crisp. On a less combative note, tastes in music, food, entertainment, sports, or whatever, can get a good argument going wherever and whenever you’d like.

Lately, I’ve been interested in reading the back and forth in letters to the editor regarding the noise that vintage — and other — aircraft make when they take to the air from Paine Field.

From the outset, I confess that I’m a hard-core airplane lover. My earliest memory of an airplane comes from the time my uncle took me out to the old Lakefront Airport in New Orleans to watch take-offs and landings.

I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4, but I remember that there was a pilot working on a small, yellow plane — likely a Piper Cub — parked on the other side of the fence. Eventually, he noticed us and walked over.

He talked to my uncle and eventually asked “if we’d like to go for a ride.” My uncle said that we didn’t have time, but I was hooked at the word “ride.”

Later, in the 1950s, when they announced that the first Boeing 707 was going to land in New Orleans, I stayed outside all afternoon because I’d heard that it was going to pass over our house. It was, to a young boy, fantastic.

As a teenager, I’d ride out to the airport, park near the end of a runway, and sit for hours watching airliners pass overhead. I never got tired of it.

In college, each June Week was capped off with the Blue Angels putting on a show over the Severn River in Annapolis. The show was great because there wasn’t a bad seat in the house and, at the time, the Blues were flying F4 Phantoms.

The Phantom was a droop-nosed, humped-back, bent-tail, smoke-belching monster powered by a pair of General Electric J79, axial flow, turbo-jet engines. It was also an irrefutable testament to the fact that, given enough power, glacial erratic boulders could acquire rudimentary flight characteristics.

As a young naval officer, I happened to be on watch late one evening at the Mayport (Fla.) Naval Base. There was this long runway used for training and, that evening, two F4s pulled onto it to take off. I was only about 100 yards away when they both lit their afterburners. Night turned to day, I couldn’t hear myself think and my chest was being pounded by the pressure waves. It was a pure adrenaline rush.

I’m mentioning all of this not for the aviation lovers out there (they already know the feelings), but to try and explain to the other side that our response to the sight and sound of airplanes is not intellectual. It’s visceral and it couldn’t be beaten out of us. Too, it crosses all lines, including gender.

My wife has been known to come rushing out of the house when an especially low-flying vintage plane or modern jet (fighter, airliner or what-have-you) passes over at a window-rattling altitude and, with an ear-to-ear grin, say “Wow! What the heck was that?”

Note: I do dearly love that woman.

So, I’m here to say that I understand that there are those who don’t like airplanes and, most especially, the noise they make.

But I’m also going to say something (with no sarcasm intended) that will undoubtedly get me an inbox full of emails telling me that I’m not going to be on a number of peoples’ Christmas card lists this year.

That statement would be: If you live near a long-established airport, as night follows day, you’re going to hear the sound of airplanes.

And that sound is pure music to many ears.

It’s an airport. What else did you expect?

Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Send comments to larrysim@comcast.net.