Looking up from Scenic Heights

Up in the sky! It’s an eagle! A heron! No, it’s a plane! Yes, a plane. An old-timer. A two-seater. Cute! Listen to that old radial engine whine! And look, it has some kind of quaint Army Air Force decals on its wings. Cool. Wait one … here come two more of ’em peeling off in formation. Wow! Those engines are loud! You can feel the vibrations right through your loins! It must be Wednesday because those boys practice their formation flying every Wednesday after work. And, look over there! It’s that tiny yellow biplane with the really big engine, climbing fast. Neat! And now here comes that big red biplane, chugging along. And there’s another little plane coming our way; more modern, but still, a single engine prop job; it’s that one that buzzes low right over our house over and over again, like it was stuck on an invisible airborne track. I wonder if a student is at the controls today?

OK, if the new columnist is going to punch out eight or nine hundred words now and then, then he should take his turn and actually throw a punch now and then, like braver columnists sometimes do. So I’ll take my turn whining-in on the Flying Cloud Airport expansion flap. The possibility that an “under the radar” plan for expansion is too close to home for me not to roll out of my stucco den and fire a missile – hopefully, not misguided.

I say, let ’em fly! Let those cute two and four-seaters buzz our homes with all due discretion. After all, this is Eden Prairie, where people can afford to own and fly cute airplanes – for the same reason that people in non-top 10 suburbs fly horseshoes into a pit: for fun.

True baby boomer guys like me (model M-1948), can’t help but love those old airplanes. My dad jumped out of one with a rifle and a couple of grenades in June of 1944. But, please, don’t try and tell me that more and larger and faster multi-engine passenger-carrying turbo-props and jets are needed within a 20-minute earthbound drive to a large metropolitan airport. Twenty-minutes to Lindbergh terminal! Are you kidding me? Are you aware of how long it takes most Chicagoans to drive to O’Hare? So what in the world is your – I mean “our” – City Council up to? Is it as another columnist has suggested, more hype than reality?

Or is the old “why bother with constituents” routine in gear? Remember, I’m new around these parts. I just don’t know. Are politicians here as stealthy as they are in Chicago? If so, maybe the kids at City Center will be pulling a Mayor Daley on us! But instead of ordering city bulldozers to punch holes in a downtown runway in the middle of the night (so no one would notice), they would order cement mixers out in the dark to start pouring a longer runway while we sleep. Before you know it, we’ll be waking to the controlled roar of a 50-seat regional jet, its General Electric power plants thundering over hundreds of Eden Prairie homes. Ten and 11-year old boys will think it’s really cool for the first couple of weeks.

As I hinted at in “Babbitt – Alive & Well in EP” (April 12), although some Edenites are doing their best to quietly conserve and restore the land around them, much of Eden Prairie’s “natural” beauty is still being eroded or eliminated daily by a few careless or even selfish interests. It’s time citizens of the most educated state in the union – I hear this “most educated state” thing a lot so it must be true – to take a stand against the denuding, polluting and noising-up of our environment. With all the motorized racket that we’re already subjected to on a daily basis – fume-belching leaf blowers, lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, brush clearers, mulchers, chainsaws, snowmobiles, motor boats, ATVs, motorcycles, shop vacs, powered carpentry tools, etc., etc. – it’s a wonder that even one heron or egret can find respite in Eden, let alone a nest site. By the way, isn’t that big white bird on the EP city seal a Great Egret? Land’s sakes.

Even without the lower property values issue, I say a hearty “no” to any kind of airport expansion for the annoyance and noise pollution factors alone. And I would hope that most of you are saying no, too – that is, if white-collar serfs have a say in this lovely fiefdom. So by all means, let local flying enthusiasts continue to have fun with their high decibel hobby. Wave up at them while tending garden or trying to talk with a neighbor across the junipers. See if they dip their wings in friendly greeting. Just don’t tell me that the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport is too far a land drive for any VIP to catch a flight to a neighboring state.

Don Darnell is a former Chicago actor, writer and broadcaster now living – and writing – out of Eden Prairie.