Maybe it strains the limits of plausibility to claim to have found a penny in front of a place called “Down to the Penny Accounting Tax Service,” but there on the sidewalk was Honest Abe in profile. Not one to shun the prospect of good luck, I bent over and picked it up.

I’m in downtown Brooksville on Friday afternoon looking at a row of empty storefronts. The strips of aluminum foil used to obscure the interior of the building next to Down to the Penny flicker in the sunlight. Farther, to the left, attached to the facade of what used to be Parker’s Hardware, is a sign proclaiming Redeemed by God Ministries.

Across the way, on the other side of the railroad tracks on this cold, crystalline afternoon, a young Mennonite mother wearing a bright green dress and black sweater is pushing a stroller containing a toddler wrapped in a bright red blanket around a walking track. Little else is moving.

Half a block away in what is the center of town, vacant buildings front both sides of Main Street. The Simply Marvelous Salon is empty of furnishings. Serendipity — which, judging from the merchandise in the window, falls somewhere between an antique shop and thrift store — bears a For Sale sign with a Memphis area code. Rhett Real Estate has one of its red signs on what was the Cadence Bank. China’s Lil Diner with its cracked windows, minimal furnishings and hot pink interior is the only business that looks like it might have a pulse.

Around the corner from City Hall (closed on Friday), two stray cats sunbathing at the door of the Brooksville Police Department suggest life within. Inside I find Sgt. Andreas Walker sitting at a desk engaged with a computer. The room is small, dark and comfortably warm. A news show plays on the TV suspended on the wall covered with high school sports schedules.

Walker, 39, a full-time officer on the Macon police force, works part-time here. A native of Mashulaville, he relates the wending career path that led to law enforcement four years ago. He loves being a policeman, he says without irony or cynicism, likes the opportunity it gives him to help people.

Walker allows he was watching Jerry Rice highlights on the computer when I came in. His brother Curtis played with Rice at Mississippi Valley. We talk about Rice’s career.

“He was here in the area about a month ago when his mother died,” Walker said.

As we talk, Mayor David Boswell walks in. Boswell, who has worked at Beloit Manhattan in Columbus for more than two decades, had to fend off three opponents to become mayor of this hamlet of 1,200 a year and a half ago. As such he struggles with the same challenges many small town mayors face –streets in need of repair, a deserted downtown and lack of activities for children.

The job comes with the usual frustrations, says Boswell. Downtown has been vacant for a decade; Cadence pulled up stakes two years ago. And, if that’s not enough, the town has a problem with stray dogs.

Yet the mayor remains hopeful.

The Mennonite-owned Old Country Bakery on the highway and Tem’s Grocery are the town’s sales tax mainstays, he says.

The town is applying for grants to repair the streets. Boswell said he has brokered an inter-local agreement with the schools to allow the gym at the elementary school to remain open on Monday and Thursday afternoons. Mention of the school made me think of radio preacher Bo Dixon who ran a small jot-’em-down across the street from the school.

For years Dixon hosted a live Sunday morning radio program on WACR, then an AM station in Catfish Alley in Columbus. When I worked for this paper as a photographer in the mid-70s, we did a photo feature on Dixon and I became a fan.

Dixon’s show was a homespun mix of advertisements, live gospel music, announcements and, if time allowed, a devotional. Listeners delighted in Dixon’s ad-libbed spiels for his advertisers, punctuated with an odd guttural noise he made in his throat. The show was wildly popular, especially in rural Noxubee County.

With mention of Bo Dixon, the mayor brightened. “Downtown Brooksville: Where you can’t get lost to save your soul,” he said, repeating Dixon’s signature sign-on.

“I want to name something for him,” Boswell said. “He was the legacy of our town of Brooksville.”

Across the railroad tracks in the Lottie Smith Center, a small metal building that houses a community center and library, Emily Wilkins Mancill rides herd on a collection of several hundred books and a five-computer network, three of which are occupied.

A sprightly woman of indeterminate age, Mancill is a Brooksville native. She lived in Columbus for 30 years before moving back to take care of her mother. In Columbus she raised two daughters, and worked at the Country Club and Beneke. As Mississippians are wont to do, Mancill reels off names of kinfolks I might know: John Bean, Glover Wilkins, Mary Alice Stewart.

Mancill came home to a very different Brooksville than she grew up in.

She reminisces dreamily about traveling picture shows that would come to town when she was a young girl. A promoter would set up a projector in a vacant building. There would be a beauty review before the show. This was before the theater in Macon, Mancill said, the Dreamland Theater.

She sighs when considering the current state of her hometown.

“I love it, really, but there’s not much left here to love.”

On the way out of town on old 45 Alternate I pass a stand-alone building on the highway. Two vehicles are out front. The only clue to what might be inside is a neatly lettered sign, “Magnolia Market.” There is no other signage and for a moment I wonder what I’ve stumbled on, a tavern, a grocery … I’m not sure.

Inside I meet Phillip Wedel, a Mennonite farmer who five years ago opened what can best be described an Amish grocery. The place is immaculate. While you wouldn’t call it health food, Wedel stocks healthy foods: meats and cheeses from Ohio Amish country, whole grains and old-fashioned home remedies.

A display near the door for a concoction called Healer’s Choice Herbal Liniment catches my eye. The label reads, “A Depression Era remedy for use on humans as well as pets and livestock.” Ingredients include apple cider vinegar, myrrh, golden seal and cayenne pepper. The label claims relief for all manner of ailments, from toothaches to chickenpox.

Before leaving I purchase bags of steel cut oats and Amish blue popcorn and urge Wedel to add more conspicuous signage.

As I drive north toward home, I considered the afternoon in Brooksville. Interesting conversations with interested, engaged people. I felt — need I say it — downright lucky.

Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.