CANALOU -- Once upon a time, Canalou was a New Madrid County hotspot on Saturday nights. The movie theater, pool halls, a skating rink, restaurants and stores drew people from all around to the town that sprang up around the Himmelberger and Harrison sawmill at the beginning of the century.

But the sawmill closed, Louis Houck's railroad line through town was abandoned and the entire business district burned down in 1933. When the Highway 80 bridge west of town washed out and was rebuilt miles away at Charter Oak, Canalou literally became a dead end.

"You've got to have a reason to want to come here," says Charles Joyce.

Joyce moved to Canalou in 1966 to farm. He and his son also have an excavation company and do some trucking. Since 1982, Joyce has been the mayor of the town except for the four years someone else pitched in. When some people in town threatened to run the new mayor off, Joyce took the job back.

The mayor and the town board have the unenviable job of trying to run a community that receives almost no sales tax revenue -- there is a small convenience-type store but townspeople say the owner doesn't open it much -- and paltry property taxes because most of the 319 residents of Canalou live in modular homes or often deteriorating mobile homes.

Canalou is a mix of well-kept houses and yards juxtaposed against scenes from Dogpatch. The town has no zoning laws, according to the mayor, and no sewer system. Joyce parks his earth-moving equipment next to his house.

The elementary school built in 1951 closed the following decade and was used by Head Start classes for awhile. Canalou's elementary students go to school in nearby Matthews, the high school students 29 miles away at New Madrid.

Now the town stores its fire truck and a road grader in the school, and the building serves as a city hall. Joyce says the building's in good shape but needs a new roof, an expense of about $70,000.

"We don't have the money," he said.

The town has only a part-time marshal. "We have to depend on a lot of volunteers," Joyce said.

Canalou had a baseball league for kids at one time, but the field needs new light poles. "There's not much here for kids," Joyce says.

He also is aware of Canalou's unsightliness.

"The town's in a mess," the mayor acknowledges. A cleanup day was scheduled last year but was canceled.

The townspeople are waiting for him to do the cleanup. "I've got the equipment to do it," he said.

Most people who live in Canalou are retired or have jobs in Sikeston.

Canalou began going downhill when machinery was developed to pick cotton. "All these towns were (thriving) when people picked cotton by hand," he said.

Canalou probably was named by railroad man Louis Houck, who used a corrupted Spanish word meaning "Where the channel is," according to Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University.

In building a railroad through the swamp, it was important to know where the channel would be in high water, Nickell said.

He thinks Canalou and other small towns like it may have begun to deteriorate when the highways were improved and people began going to Sikeston.

Though Jackie Whorton's memory is of Canalou being a beautiful place for children, Nickell says it has a reputation for being wild, with duels and gunfights during the first part of the century. "It's always been a rough little town," he said.