LIVERMORE FALLS - Kenny Smith didn't expect to be on the layoff list at the Wausau Paper mill after 22 years with the company.

On Sunday night, working the 3 to 11 p.m. shift, the 52-year-old Livermore Falls man said a truck driver asked him if the mill was closing down.

"I thought it was kind of weird," Smith said. "I said, 'I haven't been notified yet,' and then Monday I was notified."

He tried to call his wife, Elaine, before she heard the news, but someone beat him to it, he said.

Wausau announced that day it would be shutting down its No. 10 paper machine and laying off about 146 of its 235 employees by the end of the year due to rising energy costs and a sluggish economy. Mill officials have said they plan to concentrate on operating the No. 11 machine.

"I didn't know it was going to come down as far as me, but the cuts went a lot further than I thought they would, but that's OK," Smith said Wednesday. "It will be different, I guess."

Smith is No. 98 on the layoff list and doesn't know when his last day will be, he said.

"I know it's going to be sometime this year; I just don't know when," he said. "I've been fine. The shock will probably set in when I walk in and out of there for the last time. Until then, I'm going to do my job, just like I did it last week and the weeks before that."

He struggled to hold his emotion back, pausing to wipe an unshed tear, before he went on talking.

Smith has worked at the mill for nearly 22 years, while he and his wife raised a family.

The continued closing of paper mills and machines being idled in recent years have put millworkers like himself on edge about the future, he said.

He said he was concerned about what's ahead and health care coverage.

"Kenny is very optimistic," his wife, Elaine, said. "He knows we have been through a lot together and we have always gotten through. We may have torn our hair out but we've gotten through."

They've lived comfortably with her husband working a full-time and a part-time job and with her working, she said.

They're still paying off college tuition bills and have expenses, like others do, she said.

Her father lives with the couple now and she makes sure she's around to help him.

She got their property tax bill this week and it made her think about the future, Elaine said.

"I know this year is not a problem because I've saved for it," she said, "But next year, I don't know."

"I'll find a job somewhere," her husband said.

"I've already started cutting back," Elaine said.

Kenny said he would like to see the mill put on the market to give somebody else an opportunity to buy it. Maybe there is a group of investors out there that is interested, he said.

"I've had a lot of fun in there over 22 years," he said. "I've made a lot of friendships. ... It will be different."