RESIDENTS WORRY ABOUT POT REPUTATION

Last week, when Sue Buie was cutting ripe okra in her swollen field
near the Cape Fear River, she heard the unmistakable drone of an
approaching helicopter.

It was flying low, hovering over the crops. Circling back and
hovering again. "They found another one," she thought.

And they had. The Harnett County Sheriff's Office, with help from the
National Guard, found a third field of marijuana. This one was
growing deep in the woods off McArthur Road, under a canopy of leaves
and needles. The plants had been meticulously watered and fertilized
until some of them stood 6 feet tall.

There were 30,000 of them, which brings this summer's total in the
area to 70,000. "That's a lot of pot," Craig Hadley, owner of the
Sidewalk Cafe in Broadway, said with a chuckle.

But not everyone in Broadway is laughing. Because even though none of
the marijuana was found within the city limits, and even though
Broadway belongs to Lee County, not Harnett, it's close enough that
it's starting to get a reputation.

"We're the place with all the pot," said Road Runner Cafe owner
Courtney Green, twisting her face in disgust.

Only it's not. Broadway is, quite literally, a one-light town (and a
flashing light at that). The houses are neat and humble, with cramped
front porches and well-manicured lawns.

Most residents have lived here their entire lives. Even the so-called
newcomers have called Broadway home for at least 10 years. It's the
kind of place where everybody knows everybody and you can't bury your
business. When Yow's Grocery was robbed Thursday -- a nearly unheard
of occurrence in this town -- most people knew about it within 30
minutes. They offered help in 35.

When Hadley announced plans to relocate his cafe, the regulars
protested -- loudly -- and then offered to help him find something
nice in town. "If I moved out of here, they'd hang me and bury me in
a pot field," he said. Because nobody likes much change in Broadway.
They want to see tobacco leaves littering the road from Lee to
Harnett County every summer and watch the Women's Club of Broadway
plant flowers every spring. Because, says Jennifer Cummings with a
dreamy smile, Broadway is Mayberry. "Mayberry gone Haight-Ashbury,"
Hadley corrected, referring to a district in San Francisco made
famous during the 1960s hippie movement. The entire mess started in
June, when the county began its annual marijuana eradication program.
Spotters from the state Highway Patrol found a 10-acre field off
Womack Road teeming with 35,000 plants and a semi-sophisticated farming system.

Sheriff Larry Rollins had a hunch there was more, so he hired a
private pilot from Charlotte to fly over the rest of the county. Six
weeks later, that pilot found another field with 5,000 plants.

Add the 30,000 the National Guard found last week and Harnett County
has an epidemic -- an epidemic with a street value of $168 million.
And most believe that's not the end.

Catherine Wicker grew up in Harnett County, three miles from Broadway
and just about where they found some of that marijuana. She's
innocent enough to spend her days at Lett Family Park's ball field,
scouring the parking lot for lost coins (one time, she found $7), but
she's worldly enough to know her hometown's pot problem isn't going
away. Business goes where it's got buyers, and it's got buyers in
North Carolina.

"I'm glad they got it off the street, but you know there's more," she
said, taking a puff from her cigarette and kicking the sand around
under her feet, hoping something glints in the sun.

Rollins feels bad for Broadway's burgeoning reputation -- "it's a
nice little town" -- but he agrees with Wicker. There's more pot. And
when he finds it, he'll do with it what he did with the rest of it.

Exactly what that is, Rollins won't say. He's made that mistake
before. Twenty years ago, he doused a remote marijuana field with
fuel and set it ablaze. He thought every last bit of it burned, so he
let it slip where the field was located. A few days later, 100 pounds
of that marijuana was missing. It didn't take him long to locate it.

"That's the only arrest we made," Rollins said. "The guys who sold us
back our 100 pounds of diesel-soaked marijuana." He's not taking any
such chances this time around. But he will say this: All three fields
were grown with remarkably similar operations, so it's likely they're
related. And the campsites set up next to each field had remarkably
similar accoutrements -- beans, tortillas and all the ingredients to
whip up a batch of salsa -- so he suspects at least some of the
culprits are Hispanic. Whether a local is running the show, he's not
sure. But Buie, who spent Thursday morning selling the okra she'd
cut, along with watermelons and silver queen corn, is certain of it.

The National Guard found the latest marijuana field on her cousin's
land. It wasn't his, she can tell you that. But sometimes, especially
on the long afternoons she sits under her striped umbrellas and sells
vegetables out of the back of her pickup, she wishes it was hers.

Then again, she's a retired high school criminal justice teacher, and
getting arrested for growing marijuana would be bad form. "I'm not
going to jail for it," she said, "but if they made it legal, I'd
probably grow it." Really? "You think I'd be out here in the heat if
I was growing marijuana?" she asked.