On most weekday mornings, Doug Talley can be seen and heard selling newspapers near the intersection of Woodland and Fifth streets in East Nashville. He walks up and down the sidewalk as the commuter traffic ebbs and flows, limping from a hip that needs replacing and calling out with the cadence of a man selling beers at a ballpark.
“Good morning, good morning! Alright, bless y’all! Good morning, good morning!”
He started flyin’ the papers, as he calls it, around 10 years ago. For much of that time, he was living on the street, sometimes sleeping behind the nearby First Church of the Nazarene. But his ebullient near-daily presence on the corner nevertheless made him a beloved area fixture to those who saw him — a neighbor, even. Such a familiar face, in fact, that people who lived nearby would invite him to their homes and pay him to do work in their gardens…