The candy machine behind the newsroom at the Middletown Record always looked just a little bit off.

The legend is that Hunter Thompson, in his 20s and still searching for his niche, blew his job at the The Record in the late 1950s when, one day, he badly assaulted and maimed that candy machine when it took his nickel but didn't give him the candy bar.

As a young reporter at The Record, I'd go back to that vending room in between stories and look at deep dents at the bottom of the machine. I wondered if it was the same machine Thompson assaulted. (It certainly looked the same vintage.)

For a young reporter, Thompson's writing was great to read. It spoke of the great freedom that comes from not really caring who you please and who you don't. But one of my earliest (and best) editors - a Thompson contemporary in Middletown - once took me aside and upbraided me: "Quit reading that stuff. It'll destroy your writing. You want to read, read Hemingway."

Thompson killed himself yesterday. Like his life and his writing, he made sure his death was on his own terms as horrible as it was.

Like Hemingway.

MORE: In The Record's obituary of Thompson, it includes the candy machine story. For the record, he claimed to have lost two nickels, not one.