David Smyly fills out job applications in the unemployment office a couple of miles, give or take, from the old textile mill downtown, where he works for the time being.

He pages through the phone book to find the street address for his high school. In the pocket of his T-shirt, he has a pack of smokes, Basic menthols, the cheapest ones in the store.

Sometime around the first of June, his work ends at Milliken & Co., which announced plans to close the plant later this year.

"I don't know if I can make it through, but I'm gonna try," Smyly says. He recounts the tales of a hard-knock life: a buyout about five years ago from a high-paying job he could never replace, a failed marriage and the steady grip of depression.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday's local paper.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * South Carolina

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