J. TODD FOSTER: It's Only Wishful Thinking, Bristol City Officials

After taking off a few days recently, I returned to work and received an unusual salutation from reporter David McGee, a veteran here who covers Bristol Virginia city government.

“Welcome back,” he said. “Sorry to hear you’re leaving.”

He suppressed the smile that was starting to crease his lips.

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet,” he said. “Four city officials told me today you were leaving the paper.”

“Am I going some place exotic?” I asked. “Does it have a beach? Pay good money?”

“Don’t know yet,” David said. “I’m still investigating.”

The next day, David returned with more news from a growing number of Bristol Virginia city officials/sources.

“Word is you’ve been fired,” David told me. “The order came straight down from Richmond.”

“What was my offense?” I asked. “Was there a scandal, something juicy?”

“Don’t know yet,” David said. “I’m still investigating.”

His sources had reached more than a half-dozen by this point – or about three times more than Woodward & Bernstein needed to bust open Watergate and bring down a president.

“Who are your sources?” I asked David, who informed me they were Bristol Virginia city officials. “Consider the source then,” I said. “These are the same folks who think $100 million is an acceptable debt load.”

The firing rumor was gathering steam, however, and clearly was reaching critical mass.

“David, let me know asap what you hear,” I said. “If I’ve been fired, I need to inform my wife, ’cause at some point we’re going to need to start packing. And we’ll have to pull the little ones out of school.”

Telling my wife I had been fired was going to be difficult. She thinks I bring two things to the table: a riding mower and a paycheck. While both are under-horsepowered, they’re better than nothing.

I was sliding toward obsoleteness in my own house, and I had to act fast.

So I padded down the hall toward the office of the one man I knew I could count on for the hard truth: Publisher Carl Esposito.

I rapped hard on his wooden door frame.

“Why are you knocking? You never knock,” said his administrative assistant and our human resources coordinator, Amy Christian. “Why don’t you just go in like you always do?”

It dawned on me that Amy was our new HR coordinator. HR has to know about firings.

“Amy,” I asked, “have you received any pink slips with my name on them? Are security guards going to show up any minute with an empty cardboard box, demanding I evacuate my desk?”

“Are you doing drugs?” Amy asked. “You know, we have an HR policy against that.”

Never mind, I said, as I marched into Carl Esposito’s office.

“Carl, I thought you and I both subscribed to the no-surprise rule?” I said.

“We do,” he agreed.

“Then why was I fired without anyone letting me know?”

“Are you doing drugs?” Carl asked.

Long story short, Carl feigned total ignorance of my firing but conceded he could have missed a corporate memo from Richmond. “Are there any security guards outside your office with cardboard boxes?” he asked me.

“Not yet,” I replied.

David McGee’s investigation dragged into Thursday and I was growing impatient, so I marched back into the publisher’s office and launched into an impassioned monologue about how this really was an inconvenient time for me to be fired. The newspaper has an upcoming high school football magazine to produce, not to mention the season openers less than a month away. We have our huge NASCAR race week and accompanying special section.

Plus, I told the publisher, I have not yet completed my quest for my Great White Whale – Northeast Tennessee’s version of Big Foot, a creature often spoken of but rarely seen around these parts. … Congressman David Davis.

“Carl,” I said, “let’s put aside the loss of income, the humiliation of being escorted from my office by rent-a-cops and the fact that I spoke to your Rotary Club at 7:30 this morning, which would mean you had me awake at 6 a.m. and then address your fellow Rotarians after knowing I had been fired. I can deal with all that.

“But I can’t just walk away from my hunt for this elusive congressman.”

“Go for it, Ahab,” the publisher said.

I had actually begun the search for the Great White Whale several weeks earlier by enlisting the tracking abilities of two top-notch reporters, Michael L. Owens and Gary B. Gray, along with Opinion Editor Andrea Hopkins.

Not even Owens and Gray could find Davis – or get him to return several calls and e-mails. Meanwhile, Hopkins came up with an idea to lure the congressman into an editorial board meeting under the guise of, you know, an editorial board meeting, which is required before we can endorse candidates. After Davis entered the room, I was going to harpoon him and prove his existence.

But his handlers would have none of it. When they weren’t returning our phone calls or e-mails, they were referring us to the Davis campaign staff, which in turn referred us back to Davis’ congressional office.

After several weeks of political ping-pong and intrigue, I went to the Bristol downtown parade earlier this month to celebrate our nation’s independence from English tyranny; surely, I thought, I’d be able to spot the congressman there. But he was a no-show.

His Republican opponent, Phil Roe, on the other hand, walked both sides of State Street, touched more hands than a glove salesman and had two – count them – two parade floats.

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the U.S. Congress had only 434 members and that Tennessee’s 1st District was represented by a phantom, an apparition, a political yeti.

And it’s common knowledge in the newspaper business that you can’t endorse a political yeti.

And so, Roe and both his parade floats got this newspaper’s endorsement today.

Meanwhile, Ahab continues his hunt, wary of rent-a-cops bearing empty cardboard boxes.

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and may be reached at jfoster@bristolnews.com or (276) 645-2513.