Slinging nocturnal newspapers in Nashville

   
   "Slinging nocturnal newspapers in Nashville"
   
   When they were passing out stupid--I thrived with excitement for some "no common sense" reason that has always been a piece of me.  And when the Nashville Banner offered me the position of District Manager for the Circulation Department in Williamson County, eagerly so--I turned it down to be the Assistant District Manager, out of humility and stupidity.
   As I walked out of my warehouse office on my first day, I met the "in charge" District Manager, an elderly, hard-drinking Tennessee guy named Jack.  In a gravely, chain-smoking voice he swiftly told me:  "Mark, I've been working for the paper for 30 years and ain't never had a vacation--I'll see you in 3 weeks."
    So, I was the quasi-District Manager anyway, but reaping less of a green harvest.
    As the Internet exploded due to Al Gore's technological architecture, he invented it, so I was informed by my Democrat brother, the paper folded, and as today goes--print media is dying with a withering whimper.
   So, I started working nights.  I'd listen to Coast to Coast AM, enjoying Art Bell and his spiritual science, like Einstein shaking hands with Aquinas, and the Good Doctor's synergy with modern erudition births a peace into the true fabric of space, time, and beyond--God, residing over yonder, within the Sublime Perimeter, keeping Heaven clean in meticulous and OCD fashion, washing with the fiery blade of Saint Michael all the iniquity from the House of the Lord.
   Nice times.  Poverty and her lovers, the Catholic Saints, know this suffering fact brings you closer to nature.  Not Hemingway shooting bulls, or the whole man against nature thing, but a reverence to gregariously gel and mystically merge with your moonlit surroundings.  
   I saw plenty of counterpoised skunks in their coloration, protective bucks, rabbits galore; however, my favorite sightings were of foxes and coyotes.  The coyotes always scrambling in a seemingly skittish manner, shy or skulking secretly, while the foxes liked to sweetly display their meals, the Vulpes vulpes (red fox) I witnessed for weeks in a row, giving me the most comical look with a big chicken in its mouth as I tossed the Tuesday news over his head, hitting the driveway perfectly.
   I used to love the comedy of my route list.  My favorite bizarre instruction for a newspaper toss was:  "Throw up in driveway."  And technically, my stomach contents never obeyed, yet as I take most things literally, I was tempted to puke upon the suburban sprawl of it all.