By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
Staff Writer

Dinner on their minds, homeward-bound motorists welcome the sight of David Pope's vegetable stand on Ebenezer Road just outside of Peachtree City.

Pyramids of vine-ripened tomatoes, fresh-picked from Pope's truck garden, remind hungry commuters why they dread the off-season of tasteless pink counterfeits on grocery shelves. Homegrown squash, cantaloupes, and pole beans these are the real thing, the raison d'etre for the kind of semi-rural life that still throbs in hidden corners of Fayette County.

But even Paradise had its evil trespasser. David Pope looks back at the passing motorists and wonders who has been stealing his produce. Someone's purloining the potatoes, snitching the squash, and offing the onions. Pope, you see, has what may be the only honor-system veggie stand around.

The petty theft began last summer. "I can't sell stuff by the pound, not being there to weigh it," he said. "But I do weigh them in the morning to be sure I'm charging right, and I know the tomatoes in the large baskets weigh over four pounds, the small ones over two pounds, and I could tell they were taking a couple of tomatoes off the top.

"Then one day I checked up and I was $15 worth short."

When he retired from driving for Consolidated Freight Lines in 1994, he put up his little stand to sell his surplus to grateful passersby. "I liked doing it," he reminisces. "I sat under the oak tree the first year, then at the end of the driveway under the cedar trees they were hot and I about burned up and then after they widened the road and took down most of the trees, I set up under the one tree that's left. It gives good shade."

After a couple of years, Pope decided to trust his customers and spend his time growing more vegetables. He equipped the stand with a stack of plastic bags and a box with a slot in it chained to the huge spools he uses for counters. Carefully lettered signs explain the prices, noting that checks are welcome.

He added a wistful reprimand to his signs: "Thou shalt not steal. Bless all my good honest customers and forgiveness to the thief," and "Thank you for being honest."

But in recent weeks, the forgiven thief got greedy and tore out the farmer's little cash box with an estimated $60 in it.

Pope had been at the stand about 1 p.m., and the box was there then. When he returned about 4, it was gone. "I was hot and sweaty from picking, washing, and grading tomatoes, and then to find that I was ready to just put up my chain [across the driveway] and close up," he said, dejectedly.

He thought about a sign for the thief: "`If you can't afford to buy, just go ahead and take what you want.' Then I thought, they probably have more money than I have."

Pope, who was a Fayette County commissioner from 1973 to 1977, said he even considered a friend's advice that he put up a closed-circuit television camera, but decided he really didn't want to know. "A person that has to be watched isn't worth doing business with," he said.

So for now, Pope's stand remains, offering seasonal bounty at reasonable prices. The honor system cash register is still in place. But something is missing. Some of the fun is gone.