underlying questions about this world that Blue so deeply embodied were nagging at me, plain and simple. They were rattling around in my brain like the chains of a restless ghost.
According to my map, Person County, North Carolina, is exactly 482 miles from my house in New Jersey. This, to most people, may seem like a ridiculous distance to travel in search of answers about a new puppy. To my husband and me, though, this was who I am and what I do. Most of my work as a journalist takes me thousands of miles around the world an average of once a month. I earn a living writing primarily about boats and travel, so it’s not unusual for a magazine editor to call and say, “Grab your notebook and camera. We need you to fly to Thailand for a few days.” I’m in the wrong time zone just as often as regular people are in the right lane on the highway. I get sent to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean the way other business travelers book flights to Indiana or Michigan. In the context of my life, eight hours of driving, a few dollars’ worth of turnpike tolls, and less than two tanks of gas seemed like a small price to pay for finding some more answers about our new puppy. Blue was now a member of our family. I wanted to know who he really was. I was his mother, after all. Something had made him sick and afraid.
My letter to Person County Manager Heidi York and Animal Control Director Ron Shaw landed on their desks in midsummer 2011. I wanted a sit-down conversation and a tour of the building where Blue was once facing a death sentence.
After exchanging a few e-mails with the Person County attorney, I found myself driving up to the facility on Chub Lake Road in Roxboro. The city is a financial flip side of the part of New Jersey where I live, with Census data alone implying a picture of contrast so stark that it would have to be painted solely in black and white. In my community, the median household income is about $98,000 and only 2 percent of people live below the poverty line. In Roxboro, the median household income is $31,500 and nearly 17 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. I marveled at the differences between where Blue had come from and where he had ended up. Not only were these communities separated by hundreds of miles and several state lines, they were also separated by deep socioeconomic differences.
Shaw had told me, via e-mail, that his shelter was small and working with limited funds because of the recession, so I had tried to mentally prepare for a scene that would be tough on my soul. But as I drove closer, it was hard to think about anything other than the fact that, once I stepped inside the building, I would be meeting the man who had once been mere hours away from killing Blue.
My first order of business, actually, would be to introduce myself, reach out, and politely shake his hand.
1 I highly recommend The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, as well as Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. They changed the way I buy, cook, and eat meat every day. If you’d rather watch than read, then you can check out their appearances in the excellent documentary film Food , Inc .
The Reality of a Childhood Dream
It was hard for me to imagine tobacco fields as far as the eye can see as I drove southbound along Route 49 toward Roxboro. Back in the first half of the 1900s, tobacco is what kept the economy in Person County afloat. Big-type headlines in the newspaper couldn’t always fit the word “tobacco,” so editors used the shorter word “leaf.” Everybody knew what it meant, even if the elders couldn’t read, especially when the news was “School Opening Postponed due to Late Leaf Crop.”
There’s still some tobacco growing today in the fields among Person County’s four hundred or so square miles, but as Americans become more health conscious, soybeans are supplanting The Leaf as a more economically viable
According to my map, Person County, North Carolina, is exactly 482 miles from my house in New Jersey. This, to most people, may seem like a ridiculous distance to travel in search of answers about a new puppy. To my husband and me, though, this was who I am and what I do. Most of my work as a journalist takes me thousands of miles around the world an average of once a month. I earn a living writing primarily about boats and travel, so it’s not unusual for a magazine editor to call and say, “Grab your notebook and camera. We need you to fly to Thailand for a few days.” I’m in the wrong time zone just as often as regular people are in the right lane on the highway. I get sent to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean the way other business travelers book flights to Indiana or Michigan. In the context of my life, eight hours of driving, a few dollars’ worth of turnpike tolls, and less than two tanks of gas seemed like a small price to pay for finding some more answers about our new puppy. Blue was now a member of our family. I wanted to know who he really was. I was his mother, after all. Something had made him sick and afraid.
My letter to Person County Manager Heidi York and Animal Control Director Ron Shaw landed on their desks in midsummer 2011. I wanted a sit-down conversation and a tour of the building where Blue was once facing a death sentence.
After exchanging a few e-mails with the Person County attorney, I found myself driving up to the facility on Chub Lake Road in Roxboro. The city is a financial flip side of the part of New Jersey where I live, with Census data alone implying a picture of contrast so stark that it would have to be painted solely in black and white. In my community, the median household income is about $98,000 and only 2 percent of people live below the poverty line. In Roxboro, the median household income is $31,500 and nearly 17 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. I marveled at the differences between where Blue had come from and where he had ended up. Not only were these communities separated by hundreds of miles and several state lines, they were also separated by deep socioeconomic differences.
Shaw had told me, via e-mail, that his shelter was small and working with limited funds because of the recession, so I had tried to mentally prepare for a scene that would be tough on my soul. But as I drove closer, it was hard to think about anything other than the fact that, once I stepped inside the building, I would be meeting the man who had once been mere hours away from killing Blue.
My first order of business, actually, would be to introduce myself, reach out, and politely shake his hand.
1 I highly recommend The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, as well as Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. They changed the way I buy, cook, and eat meat every day. If you’d rather watch than read, then you can check out their appearances in the excellent documentary film Food , Inc .
The Reality of a Childhood Dream
It was hard for me to imagine tobacco fields as far as the eye can see as I drove southbound along Route 49 toward Roxboro. Back in the first half of the 1900s, tobacco is what kept the economy in Person County afloat. Big-type headlines in the newspaper couldn’t always fit the word “tobacco,” so editors used the shorter word “leaf.” Everybody knew what it meant, even if the elders couldn’t read, especially when the news was “School Opening Postponed due to Late Leaf Crop.”
There’s still some tobacco growing today in the fields among Person County’s four hundred or so square miles, but as Americans become more health conscious, soybeans are supplanting The Leaf as a more economically viable
Similar Books
