Too much of a racket in Swampscott

Once in a while, you read a story that doesn?t exactly stack up as major in the grand scheme of things, but it just rubs you the wrong way.The one in Wednesday?s paper about the abutters of the Swampscott Beach Club, and their complaints about a proposed expansion and the planned installation of lights on the tennis courts, is one of them.These people are laughable. They ought to be embarrassed that their complaints ever saw the light of day.Someone should go all Allen Iverson on them, only instead of saying “practice,” as he did 14 times in a classic news conference a few years back, it should be “tennis.” As in, “we?re talking about tennis here. Tennis.”Seriously. Tennis. Not a drug rehab facility. Not a halfway house. Not a juvenile detention center (all of which have been proposed in other North Shore communities). Tennis.You get the idea.You would have a pretty good life for yourself if the only thing you had to be concerned with was a tennis court (or two, or three) – even with lights. Imagine living with the drone of a little ball being hit back and forth over a net with a racket held together by strings. Ping-Pong makes more of a racket.Put that unbearable noise next to the sound of rumbling trucks careening down Route 1, or Route 128. Or maybe you wake up (as I do on weekends) to the sound of kids playing at the local park. It could be that your lot in life is to hear the street life serenade (to borrow from Billy Joel) of the inner city.Here is a tip for the Beach Club abutters: Don?t move to Manhattan (though watching you try to stop taxi drivers from honking their horns at 3 a.m. would be a hoot).No. We?re moaning about tennis courts.So, to the person who claims tennis is a “loud game,” are you kidding me? You?d go out of your mind if you lived anywhere else, except maybe next to Tedesco. Then again, the thwack of a club hitting an even-smaller ball might send you over the edge too. And, of course, now and then you might have to look out for Judge Elihu Smails if he gets angry and throws his golf club in your direction. And those caddies!If this isn?t a classic case of “Not In My Backyard,” nothing is. Tennis is not a noisy game. I remember attending a professional match back in the 1970s where Guillermo Vilas wouldn?t even serve the ball unless the place was quiet as a church on Sunday morning. There?s more noise on the 18th green at Augusta on Day 4 of the Masters.If you want noise, how about softball games at the park behind your house, where people park up and down your street (including perilously close to your driveway so that getting out is an unnecessary adventure). Welcome to my world.Please. This is an issue best solved quietly and behind the scenes. Complaining about this only reinforces the idea many have that you?re simply NIMBY snobs who just want all forms of life to cease in and around your neighborhood.Or, to put it another way, if I had my choice between anything else I?ve described here and a quasi-country club in my backyard, I know what I?d choose.