John V. Lombardi

I HAVE ARRIVED AT LAST IN THAT PECULIAR ZONE where I am no longer young and not yet old. This stage of a human life is called, of course, middle age. Alas, even that familiar phrase is inaccurate; at fifty-two, I am not in the middle of my life, for there is little chance that I will live to 104. But I am certainly in the middle of my adult life, and this sometimes causes personal astonishment.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1981, I was driving east on Route 24 near Short Hills, New Jersey, a stretch of new road that several years before had, at a stroke, transformed the leafy suburban terrain of my childhood into a futuristic landscape—that had, at a stroke, allowed for the rapid transit of many lanes of cars between the city, which lay strung across the horizon twenty miles distant, and the newly expanded, transfigured and futurized, mall.

The story goes something like this: The Blackhawks trailed 2-0 against the powerhouse Oilers in the 1985 Campbell Conference finals. The series shifted to Chicago for a pivotal Game 3 at The Stadium. As the organ began playing, and Wayne Messmer opened the Star Spangled Banner, Blackhawks fans started cheering wildly as the song played, in an attempt to inspire the team before the big game. The Hawks went on to lose the series, but the tradition stuck.