Robert Meadows shades his eyes from the glare of the noonday sun and adjusts the canvas chair he is sitting in.

The lunchtime traffic is whizzing past on Broad Street, just a few yards from where Meadows has set up his modest fruit and vegetable stand in the parking lot of the Church’s Chicken restaurant.

“It’s a blessing to be able to see so many folk pass by,” he says as he watches the cars. “Going and coming all the time. It’s a blessing.”

Meadows is one of any number of roadside produce vendors who have sprouted up on Selma’s streets in recent weeks — along with the okra, beans, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peaches and watermelons they hawk from the backs of battered pickups.

They don’t seem to mind the competition. The live and let live ethic is alive and well among produce vendors. Each stakes out his own street corner and is content to accept whatever customers the market sends his way.

Selling watermelons off a pickup truck is not the sort of activity that attracts many type A personalities.

Meadows has been setting up on this corner for “five or 10 years now,” ever since he retired from 25 years in a cement plant. Working in the cement plant was better, he’ll tell you, because it paid more.

But, then, he’s not really in it for the money.

“Mostly, it’s just something to do,” Meadows says. “Keeps my arth-a-ri-tis from bothering me so much. Besides, if I stayed home I’d be dead by now. The people I worked with at the cement plant, they all dead. Ones ain’t dead can’t move.”

He laughs. Unlike some vendors, Meadows does not grow his own produce. A bad back keeps him from taking a hoe to a row of beans. That, and his “arth-a-ri-tis.” Instead, he buys the produce he sells from a supplier over in Mississippi.

“You got anything comes out of Selma?” asks an inquisitive customer.

“Ain’t nothing ever come out of Selma but hard times,” Meadows replies with an infectious laugh.

He laughs easily. Most of the people who come to thump his watermelons and squeeze his tomatoes do not laugh nearly as easily or as often.

“Happy? I’m happy everyday,” he says. “I’m happy with everybody I meet. I stay that way seven days a week.”

No economic development agencies offered Meadows any incentives to open his business. There was no ribbon cutting, no speech by the governor. He just loaded up the truck one day, asked the folks at the chicken place if he could use a corner of their parking lot, and set out his canvas chair.

He’s tried selling a variety of things over the years – firewood, scrap iron and the like. At least with produce, he can eat what he doesn’t sell. He’s lasted longer now than a lot of businesses that have received economic incentives. He offers this clue to his longevity.

“Anybody wants a job can find one,” Meadows insists. “It might not be what they want at first, but it’ll do till they find something better. But I’ll say this, you ain’t gonna find a job with your britches hanging down around your knees. You can’t get a job slopping a hog dressed like that. And another thing, get a good education. These days you need a good education to survive.”

If he has any regrets, it is that his own education did not go as far as he would have liked. “But,” he adds, “I’m surviving.”

Downtown, on Washington Street, Robert Strong has been surviving and growing and selling fruits and vegetables for more than 50 years. In that time he’s developed a faithful following of loyal customers.

“I just love to see stuff grow,” Strong says of his life’s work. “It’s a lot of work, growing things. But I’m used to it by now. My daddy had 14 children and he brought us up working. That’s something people today don’t do.”

Strong rents about 100 acres out on River Road. He gets up early each morning and works in the field till it gets too hot, then he loads up the truck and sells the fruits of his labor each afternoon. Some days, he shrugs, sales are pretty slow. Some days are a little better.

“I had to hire me some help not long ago, ’cause I done got old and can’t work like I used to,” he says. “But it’s hard to get people today to work, even when you pay ’em good money.”

Strong does not carry a book with him to pass the time between customers. But that does not mean that his mind is idle. Far from it.

“You see, I’m a Christian,” Strong explains. “Most of the time I’ll be thinking about the Lord, and thanking him for sending these people to buy from me. If I’m selling watermelons, I talk to the Lord and ask him to make ’em sweet, make ’em please the people. And he has.

“People been telling me how good they are.”

Asked if he is happy with his lot in life, Strong does not hesitate. “Of course I’m happy,” he says. “God got me happy – not only happy, God got me with a lot of peace in my life…. Peace.”

Strong sneaks a sideways glance to see if he has made himself understood. The temperature is in the upper 90s, but a gentle breeze rustles the two patio umbrellas Strong has rigged up to shade the watermelons that fill the back of his pickup. Presently, he takes another tack.

“My philosophy of life is doing things that please God, treating people right, loving people. See, when I do that, whatever I ask him for he’ll give it to me. I believe that, because I asked him to bless my family and he has,” he says.

Just then a car pulls up. A man gets out and he and Strong shake hands and begin to examine the watermelons that fill the pickup with the patio umbrellas.

And before he sells them, Strong gives each one a silent blessing.