Leaving 'good enough' alone

For Harriett Molloy, doctors warned, it was rural living or a rubber room. So, in 1979, Molloy fled her urban Wisconsin life and moved to Potrero—by then a quiescent community of craftsmen, artists, hunters and Christmas-tree farmers four miles from the U.S.-Mexico border at Tecate.

Molloy had been inexplicably and chronically ill since the mid-’70s, though doctors had tried everything to cure her mysterious malaise, which included fatigue, headaches and nausea. After being referred to a series of psychiatrists, Molloy herself began to wonder if she were crazy.

Frustrated with her physical and psychological problems, Molloy’s husband, a bigwig in the then-burgeoning reel-to-reel and quadraphonic-sound technologies, left her.

Molloy was eventually diagnosed with environmental illness, an acute allergic reaction to low levels of chemicals, fumes and other substances in the modern environment.

Her brother found her a modest house in Potrero, which she secured for $350 down and some cash her husband later sent from the sale of her car. She stripped the house of everything chemically based, covered the walls with non-toxic paint and replaced propane with electric heat. Slowly, the clean air and tranquility began to work its magic on her body and mind.

“This is the place,” said Molloy, now 70. She considers herself cured. “It worked.”

Learning of Molloy’s miraculous recovery, others with similar maladies began showing up on her doorstep. Since 1979, some 300 people have sought respite in one of her cabins or trailers, a retreat Molloy refers to as the Last Resort.

Mike Streenan, who owns the Potrero General Store off state Route 94 with fiancée Willena Arnold, referred to Potrero as “the last hurrah.”

At the store last month, Streenan stocked SnoBalls, apple pies and other confections that he drives miles to retrieve (the Hostess delivery truck doesn’t make its way up windy state Route 94, the main artery in and out of town).

Streenan and Arnold had just started selling lottery tickets the day before, and Streenan was happily hoisting them off on his customers.

“It’s Patti, the lottery queen!” Streenan chimed, as Potrero cabinetmaker Patti Farish approached the register with a 12-pack of St. Pauli Girl.

Before his arrival, Streenan spent 12 years living with the constant whoosh of the Big Dipper roller coaster and drunken beach brawls near Belmont Park in Mission Beach. With his eyes partially obscured by tinted glasses, it is hard to get a read on his expression, though, like many in Potrero, Streenan is noticeably guarded against outsiders and their intentions.

“It’s just like living in Mayberry,” Streenan said of the town. “There’s no bums on the streets; everybody knows everybody. This is how it used to be everywhere. People have forgotten what that was like, because they’ve lived in the suburbs for so long.”

Though only 51, Streenan says he is content to spend the rest of his life in Potrero, one of the few remaining vestiges in the county untouched by time or big-box development.

“I’ll be here till I’m dead,” Streenan said, in a voice somewhere between resignation and pride. “This is it.”

Willena and her daughter Emily found their way back to their native Potrero after a stint in the Mojave Desert, when Emily was a toddler.

“It’s like I live, eat, breath, sleep Potrero,” said Emily, now 23 and working in her mother’s store. “I’ve always found work here.”

Emily dates a childhood friend, Isaac Nuño.

“That’s how small it gets,” she said. “Like, I end up dating one of my friends from forever…. At least my mom likes him.”

The day before, Mike, Willena, Emily and Isaac were huddled around a barbeque packed with sizzling ribs, burgers, steak and chicken in Potrero County Park, sipping beers with about 20 family members and friends. Nearby, some of the group’s children tore it up on playground equipment.

Isaac’s younger brother Dan tended the grill as Isaac, 28, expounded on life in Potrero.

“It’s the greatest place ever,” he said. “You can do anything you want in Potrero…. We like the freedom that we have out here and how far everybody is away from each other…. You can have bonfires in your front yard, just chilling out, drinking beers.”

A young woman in the group added, “You can hang out with your friends and not have someone call the cops on you.”

Sharon Arnold, who returned to her “stomping grounds” to join the Saturday afternoon grilling party, speaks with weariness about the bustle of living in the city. She’s not talking about San Diego, mind you, but Jamul—population about 6,000.

Her daughter, an oral surgeon, and son, who’s in the heating and air-conditioning business, chose to stay in Potrero and are among about 20 members of the Arnold clan who still live there.

“They call people up here a bunch of rednecks, but it’s not true,” said Sharon, 42, quivering against the cold, her blonde hair tucked beneath the hood of a faux-fur-trimmed red winter coat.

“It is different,” she said. “People will come up here. They get afraid, like some lady drove up 94 the other day [and] asked us for directions. She said, ‘Oh, these roads scare me!’”

Coyotes, rattlesnakes, mountain lions—you get used to it, Sharon said.

“I had to take a yellow diamondback from my cat once,” she said. “She was about to get bit…. That doesn’t scare anybody up here.”

Along with the family septic business, the Arnolds have their own urban legend, which includes two explanations for how patriarch James Calvert Arnold came to acquire 165 acres south of Potrero County Park.

Younger family members, such as Emily and Sharon, relish a version of the story that has James C. Arnold purchasing the land at a bar, slapping between $150 to $3,000 into the palm of a cash-strapped inebriant, then pocketing the deed.  

“Yeah, that’s the story,” Emily laughed, a hint of family pride in her voice.  “The guy was hammered and he’s all, ‘I want to get rid of it,’ and my great grandpa’s all, ‘Alright! I’ll take that!’”

Emily’s grandmother, 73-year-old Yvonne “Bonnie” Arnold, tells a different story about her father-in-law’s land acquisition. James C. Arnold owned a bar—The Ark—across from Ream Field in Imperial Beach, she said. However, he didn’t drink or smoke and grew tired of the business, scanning the newspapers for property as far away as Oregon.

He eventually purchased the Potrero property and an accompanying house in 1955, for $3,000, Bonnie said.

Though many have come to Potrero for the healthy atmosphere, in a tragic twist of fate for the Arnold family, James Calvert and all six of his children, including Bonnie’s husband Eugene, succumbed to cancer.

“It was terrible,” she said. “I don’t like to remember the dates. I loved them all.”

Bonnie Arnold lost her mobile home in the Harris fire last fall. She also suffers from chronic arthritis and congestive heart failure. In conversation, however, she remains remarkably upbeat, speaking at length about her love for Potrero.

“Every time something bad happens to somebody here, they have a spaghetti dinner and we go over to the community center and we make pies and cakes and breads and cinnamon rolls, and then after the dinner we have an auction,” she said. “Everybody whose house burnt down or something, we usually make about $2,000 and give it to them to get back on their feet.”

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