Marijuana is so ubiquitous here that everyone, from schoolteachers to kids, can tell you when a sinsemilla bud is ripe. From late summer to fall, the county reeks with the skunk-like stench of ready-to-harvest weed. The annual $1.5 billion pot crop constitutes two-thirds of Mendocino County's entire economy.

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"We need to harness this gigantic industry, not try to kill it," said Laura Hamburg, whose arrest last fall so infuriated her that she decided to head up the anti-B push. "There's this caricature about this county that we're all hippies sitting around smoking joints, but that's the last thing from reality. Medical users truly need this plant."

That's when a would-be robber leaped the fence of Larry Puterbaugh's backyard and shot and wounded his neighbor, Memo Parker. The man was trying to steal from Parker's pot farm, police said. Puterbaugh had already complained for years about the stench from the hundreds of pot plants over his back fence - but even after the shooting, police did nothing about it. Parker had doctor-signed cards authorizing medicinal growth on the farm.

Parker later pleaded no contest to cultivating too many plants in a separate case. But in 2004, all Puterbaugh could do was fume.
"That's when I began thinking we have to do something," Puterbaugh said. "Why should we be scared in our own neighborhoods, in a quiet town like this?

"It's like we kicked the door open and said to the rest of the nation, 'Come on in and grow pot!' " said Mike Sweeney, an environmental activist who is helping direct the Measure B campaign. "Now, what we want to do is slam that door shut. We want people around the country to know that Mendocino has changed its ways."

"What really got to me was when I tried to hire some teenagers for my [welding] shop, and they laughed at me," said Liberty. "They said they make so much money harvesting pot for growers that they don't need my $8-an-hour jobs.

"Look, they can make $30 an hour, and I see them driving $50,000 tricked-up trucks all over town," he said. "I can't compete with that. Nobody can. How in the world can we attract new business when the workforce just wants to grow or harvest pot?"

"We definitely go our own way," said longtime resident Randy Bream, leaning against the till at his Mendocino Hobbies shop in Ukiah. "Look, I call myself a conservative, and I don't care who grows pot as long as they don't push it on me or my kids.

"What matters for me is that there are friendly people here. On Memorial Day, the city puts flags up and down the main street. All this fighting over pot? I wish they'd just hurry up and decide whether it's legal so we can stop talking about it."