Free Little Boy Blue by Kim Kavin

choice. The county does have two industrial parks, but the nearest center of big business is at least an hour beyond in the Raleigh-Durham region, where Research Triangle is home to a number of high-tech companies and university research facilities. I felt like I was a planet away from anything resembling a corporate skyscraper as I drove around the boundaries of Roxboro proper. Between the “Welcome to Person County” sign and the edge of the city, I passed a great deal of open land and some modest homes with trucks in the driveway that were no doubt used for father-son fishing trips on the weekends. Two signs caught my eye along the side of this main highway, one with a real-estate advertisement for a 106-acre parcel and another handwritten by somebody selling a dozen eggs for a dollar. After I got to Roxboro’s three-block-long main street, I saw telltale signs of life as it is today in Person County. “For rent” posters hung in more than a half-dozen empty storefronts.
    In the span of a single day, I had driven into a part of America that seemed truly foreign to me. Where I live on the edge of commuting distance into New York City, we have cornfields, for sure, and a fair number of farm stands, but we also have a lot of gorgeous stables used by Olympic-level riders. The “for sale” signs usually refer to homes on parcels that have been subdivided down to less than an acre, any extra cars in the driveways are usually fuel-efficient foreign models, and people selling eggs at $4 a dozen always include the word “organic” on their handmade signs. My town, too, has been hit hard by the recession, but we have new businesses where the old ones used to be, as opposed to rows of vacancies.
    As a travel writer, I’m used to seeing a lot of unique communities. I’ve spent time everywhere from ancient Greek harbors where donkeys are still the primary mode of transportation to Jamaican coffee farms where women live in half-built cinderblock homes to Fijian islands where thatched huts are still the primary form of shelter. Driving into Person County made me feel like I was going not only into yet another new place, but also into a contrasting culture.
    I couldn’t help but wonder if that culture had anything to do with the fact that so many dogs like Blue seemed to be in trouble here, and whether the way of life where I live had anything to do with the fact that so many of them were finding homes there.
    The current animal shelter, as best as anybody can remember in Person County, was originally built sometime during the 1950s. It’s a couple of miles outside of town, down a gravel driveway that it shares with the Public Works Maintenance Building. The shelter is prominently advertised along the road by a white sign with bright blue letters and an image of the county seal that has faded from more than a few too many days beneath North Carolina’s 100-degree summer sun. But the building itself where dogs like Blue are kept is back behind the maintenance office, and behind the Dumpster, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with angled barbed wire to keep people out after hours.
    According to The Times-Courier , the problem with dogs as recently as the 1960s was strays running wild. The edition printed on Monday, February 15, 1960, carries a front-page story stating that the county dog warden picked up 86 stray dogs the previous month and found new homes for all but 7 dogs. The edition printed on Thursday, March 3, 1960, states that in February of that year, 117 stray dogs were picked up in the county. About half of them found new homes. Sixty-one were “disposed of” and another 16 were shot.
    I had looked, while driving into town, for dogs running loose or in packs along the side of the road. I’d paid especially close attention to garbage cans behind the local eateries. When people talk about a rural community and an overcrowded animal shelter, the common assumption is that the problem is strays. But I hadn’t