CAMDEN, Ark. – For 73 years, the stacks at International Paper Co.’s mill belched gray, sour steam day and night over the piney woods of south Arkansas.

On summer afternoons, the plumes sullied laundry hanging outside. On winter mornings, they guided deer hunters downwind of their quarry. In any season, townspeople knew the answer to the question, “Paper or plastic?”

But IP closed the paper-bag plant in January, leaving 580 workers without a way to support families long dependent on company paychecks. The employee union urged IP to sell to another papermaker, but the company refused to put it into a competitor’s hands while the market was down.

Now, with the hulking plant sitting silent, this town of 15,000 is dealing with its pain and trying to figure out how to remake itself economically.

“You cannot make any money in this town anymore, but at least you [can] breathe,” said unemployed mill worker Larry Williams.

“When I go to the grocery store now, I ask for plastic,” added colleague Steve Firth, his friends from the plant nodding in agreement.

Officials at International Paper said a recession in the paper industry cut company profits from $227 million in the fourth quarter of 1999 to $145 million a year later. In October, it said it would cut 2,500 jobs at Camden and plants in Lock Haven, Pa., and Mobile, Ala.

The Camden shutdown was the first of three sizable plant closures announced for rural Arkansas in recent weeks. Burlington Industries will close two rug plants in nearby Monticello, at a cost of 750 jobs, and Fruit of the Loom will lay off nearly 800 textile workers at Osceola, on the Mississippi River.

The IP layoffs have created one of the region’s worst economic downturns, said William Jordan, a longtime real estate agent and insurance salesman.

Eight years ago, Hughes Missile Systems gradually shut down a weapons plant that had employed 1,700 people. In some ways the International Paper closing is a harder hit because the weapons plant laid off its workers over a five-year period, he said.

“Our total economy isn’t doing too good,” Jordan said, flipping through photographs of houses he has listed. Most of the homes belong to IP executives who have relocated to other plants.

Jordan predicts the town won’t feel the full impact of the IP closing for at least a year, when severance pay and unemployment benefits end. That’s when he predicts laid-off workers could begin putting their homes on the market.

“People who don’t want to leave Camden will have to start making up their minds,” he said.

At the Cardinal Cafe near the mill, waitress Macy Williams served the daily special – a $3 hamburger plate with french fries – and talked about the plant closing.

“In the mornings, the guys coming off the graveyard shift used to come in here and have coffee,” she said. “Usually 15 to 20 tables would be full.”

Nowadays, the unemployed workers come in during the afternoons to drink coffee, smoke and enjoy an occasional piece of pie. Williams greets them with a smile and word of encouragement.

“We try to be upbeat about it around here,” she said.

Ricky Santifer, 20 years a paper-machine operator, comes to the cafe to catch up with the regulars. In April, he plans to start taking welding classes at a technical school.

“I’m 42, I’m unskilled, and my priorities now are finding a new skill to re-enter the workforce,” he said.