"Money from the Melville Bank was spread out to dry in Room 28 of the Able Hotel, an operation which took 15 days. When the water receded in the Merchants and Farmers Bank to the point where the safe could be opened, a certain amount of money was removed every day and spread on the floor of Room 28, after having been transported in a grass sack by canoe down the street from the bank to the Able Hotel."

The Able Hotel stands today, a well-kept, two-story, white structure accommodating Comeaux's Cafe and Cason's Barber Shop. At Cason's, one may make appointments for after 5:30 p.m. and purchase stick-ons.

"Get them now. Any slogan. Order inside." That's what a sign in the window says. There's a sampling of stick-ons: "Melville is a great place to be," "Melville -- the heart of Louisiana," "Melville is a classy town," "Hottest Chevy in Melville" and "Speed Ford of Melville."

When the railroad came to town in the 1880s, land owner Bay Anderson was asked if he wanted his name on the depot. Anderson asked that the depot bear the name of his son Mel.

In the 1930s, Melville's Church Street carried highway traffic between north Louisiana and Baton Rouge. Melville's ferry was the only place to cross the Atchafalaya. Days when LSU was playing football at home, ferry traffic lined up for blocks, idling in front of the Able Hotel. The hotel advertised itself as being "In the Fabulous Atchafalaya Country -- Not Swanky but Friendly."

The bridge over the Atchafalaya at Krotz Springs made Melville an overnight backwater. Some say the bridge was built down river because a ferryman refused to let then Gov. Huey Long go to the head of the line. Another version has it that someone offered Long a soap box during a stump speech at Melville. Neither story is true, said Fire Chief Joe Thomasson.

"They probably put the bridge at Krotz Springs because it was the best place," Thomasson said.

One afternoon, Thomasson, 69, sat on a stool in Comeaux's cafe talking to Duvillier Comeaux, owner of the closed Able Hotel and cafe that bears his name.

Thomasson went to work for the town in 1937. He was 18. Today, he is superintendent of gas, water and lights when he's not mustering the volunteer fire brigade. Thomasson was born in Melville. He was nine years old in May 1927 when the Atchafalaya River broke through the levee below the town. Andrew Thomasson, Joe Thomasson's father, was the railroad bridge tender.

"He'd just walked across the bridge when the levee broke," Thomasson said. "Two long spans went in."

A five-mile, ring levee surrounding the town is a reminder of the great event in Melville's history.

Comeaux, 78, came to Melville from Pierre Part in 1932. He was 22. Except for World War II (he served in India) and a couple of trips to Cleveland, Texas, to visit a friend, Comeaux has never traveled far from Melville.

A couple of years ago, the town had "Comeaux Day" to honor the man everyone calls D.J. or Comeaux. To outsiders, Comeaux presents a gruff, self-deprecating demeanor. Townspeople know he has IOUs stuffed in water glasses or anchored beneath upturned coffee cups on the shelves behind the counter. Many of the markers are brittle brown with age. One is from 1947.

There's an IOU from 1981 for $66.15.

"Good year for him," Comeaux mused. "Bad for me."

Comeaux drove a relative to Arizona in his 1951 Pontiac once. Comeaux went on to Los Angeles alone.

"I got to Los Angeles, I turned around and came back. I didn't even get out of my car."

Why not?

"Because I am Comeaux," he said, laughing.

"Comeaux's a good fella; he helps a lot of people," Thomasson said.

Some of the bills are for feeding prisoners in the Melville jail, three cells in town hall.

"There hasn't been a prisoner since Nov. 2," Comeaux said.

"If they did something bad," Thomasson said, "they go to Opelousas. If not, they give 'em to me, and I try to work 'em on the streets."

The town's streets are a sore point with officials.

"Streets have been torn up for four years," Thomasson said.

A sewer contractor quit in the middle of a major overhaul of the town's plumbing, Thomasson said. There's a new contractor on the job, but the ride in Thomasson's truck is rough.

There's a dog cage in the back of the fire chief's truck. Deer season, the male raison d'etre in Melville, is close.

"The first nine days is "still hunting,' " Thomasson said. "I like that all right, but I like to hear the dogs run."

The hunting around Melville used to be open.

"It's all in clubs now," Thomasson said.

The fire chief belongs to three. Comeaux has never hunted, but he opens the cafe at 4 a.m. for breakfast. A few hunters drop by.

"They all stay at the hunting clubs, now," Comeaux said. "Can't get up in the morning to go hunting."

In hunting season, men and boys in orange hats and camouflage suits, shotguns and rifles hanging from gun racks, travel Church Street in pickups. Ones who've killed deer are headed for Willie Rodriguez's little cold storage place. In Melville, the name Rodriguez is pronounced "Rodiger." Thomasson doesn't know why.

Melville's earliest settlers were American Protestants. A town was in the formative stages by the 1840s. An early resident of the town recalls Melville of the 1880s as being "all woods, full of sloughs and bayous, with stores along the levee which was no more than a potato ridge."

Thomasson is an old name in Melville. So are Jones, Darnall and Gordon. Boudreaux is an old French name, as are Fontenot, Soileau, Burleigh and Duplechain. After the turn of the century, Italians began arriving in Melville. They became the town's merchants. Their names are Napoli, Cannatella, Corte, Dicapo and Polozola.

"Different ones spell it (Polozola or Polotzola) different ways," Thomasson said.

Flatboats and steamboats brought Melville what it needed and took away the town's cash crops. Show boats stopped at Melville. A woman remembered the first silent picture she saw. The movie was shown on a steamboat. Traveling the Atchafalaya and bayous, boats made their way to the Mississippi and the world beyond.

William Coffree came to Melville with a street fair. He and his wife decided to stay on. Coffree put on vaudeville shows and showed silent films. He generated his own electricity. In 1915, his son, Bill, built Melville's first light plant.

Thomasson's father began keeping weather records and recording the level of the Atchafalaya River after the great flood for the U.S. Weather Bureau. Thomasson's sister, Ruth Hebert, carried on her father's work until two years ago. Now, a satellite watches the river.

Thomasson was at the ferry landing, the only ferry across the Atchafalaya, when Anthony Moreau, 20, rode up on a three-wheeler.

"We saw four deer on the pipeline, Mr. Joe," Moreau reported.

"They better not be there Saturday, huh?" Thomasson said.

"No, sir. I'm gonna roll one if they are. I hope I do."

Moreau is a commercial fisherman. His father, Jessie, who used to be chief of police, is a fisherman. His uncles fish.

"Summer and spring we make a good living," Moreau said. "During the winter, it's slow, mostly buffalo."

"He's a good fella," Moreau said of his sometimes hunting companion and longtime utilities man. "He's there when you need him. You got a leak, day or night, he'll get up and take care of it."

Five years ago, Comeaux closed the Able Hotel. There were once four hotels in town. The hotels booked rooms to oil workers, rivermen, government engineers. Above Melville there is a suspension bridge supporting a gas pipeline over the wide Atchafalaya between impressive towers. The pipeline is a natural gas transport link between Texas and New York.

The Concerned Citizens, people Thomasson described as "not young, not old," are trying to bring Melville back.

"Trying to get Melville back the way it was, which you can't," said Comeaux.

The citizens committee is promoting Neighborhood Watch to try to stem an outbreak of vandalism. The committee is putting up Christmas lights and a town tree for the first time in years. A Christmas parade is planned.

"They're trying to bring work in here," Thomasson said.

"This is a good place to live," he said. "It's real quiet. Very little traffic. Good people."

Thomasson leaves his truck keys in the ignition.

"I never locked my house until a few months ago."

Many of the town's residents are elderly, Thomasson said. There's high unemployment among the residents of working age. A lot of people work in other towns. Some commute to Baton Rouge an hour away.

"The only healthy old man here is Comeaux," Comeaux said, gathering coffee cups from the counter. "That's because he walks the floor in here 10 hours a day and doesn't have a wife to nag him. I guess they nag. I never had a wife."