My Editor Froze to Death

A sorcerer is an empty man except for a collection of stories with a universal application (Don Juan Mateus)

I was twenty and just back in the U.S. from a Navy kiddie cruise (in at 17, out by 21) when I got my first newspaper job. The editor who hired me froze to death in his pickup, in front of a bar.

But that was years later, when I was staffing on a magazine in Phoenix.
Freezing is supposed to be relatively painless. I think he was okay with it.
He wanted to be young, like me, with his life in front of him, and with all that potential of youth.

He had been a television reporter while he was young, but he wasn’t young anymore. He was used to being recognized, but now he was feeling the rising panic of irrelevance.

He wanted to be recognized, to be a winner. I didn’t know that, or I didn’t care. He was a winner as far as I was concerned because he was my friend.
I really liked the man and I liked his family. His two sons were closer to my age than he was, but we were partners in putting out a daily newspaper, and when we’d put it to bed, we celebrated a job well done with distilled spirits.