Pouring the concrete for the third runway made a lot of cement finishers and contractors happy last week. And I am sure it made the Port of Seattle Commission and officials delirious with satisfaction.

After all, it is cork-popping time for all those people who made giant bucks off the huge project that uprooted over 3,600 homes, helped kill scores of Burien businesses, cost taxpayers millions in mitigating fees and depreciated the value of thousands of home owners who play golf or live in the flight path from South Park to Milton.

As a resident of the area for 67 years, the growth of the monster in our midst has never made me happy.

Sure, I have flown from the concrete cavern many times. I liked not having to drive to Everett or Centralia to get a plane to Hawaii. But it sure was a lot more fun than flying lately.

We've lost a lot of the intimacy that once made the airport seem more lovable and local. Once upon a time, I loved being able to go down on the field and get on the plane to see friends, hug, say goodbye and chat with the pilot.

I watched it grow.

I lived not more than 10 minutes from the original strip and before it was built I hunted pheasants in the woodsy fields at both ends. Now those familiar fields are under the third runway.

As I watched huge paving machines pour concrete over the bulldozed earth last week, I stood not far from the wonderful Evergreen Tennis Club where once I lobbed and volleyed a lot of shots with leader Jack Gering back in the early fifties.

That's where Times/News editor Eric Mathison learned to swim and his brother Phil was the tennis pro. Today that club is covered by a million tons of fill dirt and concrete.

A few blocks south on what used to be 12th Avenue South I used to visit with friends Bill and Margie Ellis (she was a popular waitress at the now long gone Black Angus). Bill had created a Garden of Eden showplace.

So I am not very happy too see the paving of the newest runway and there is little doubt that in my mind that a fourth runway is already under study in some office. More capacity will eventually be called for by powers that elect the officials and there is little likelihood it will be built in Everett.

We came close to stopping this juggernaut back in the days when Boeing chairman and Normandy Park resident T. Wilson wanted to build company headquarters on the west side of the airport.

The Boeing board approved, they applied for the permits and one of the residents of 12th South got a petition going among others on the street. He was afraid of helicopters flying executives in.

When it looked like a zoning struggle would use up too much time, Wilson made the decision to drop the plan and remodel their office building on East Marginal Way beside Plant Two.

Subsequently the company [many years later] decided to move headquarters to Chicago.

What if Boeing had built its huge HQ on the site of the third runway? I doubt that those million of tons of dirt and the paving machines would ever have been used here.

Amazing how the power of one petitioner changed the course of history in the Highline community.

I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade. Just a personal observation.