WADLEY — The smell of green beans permeated Bonnie Wilkinson's restaurant in Wadley Monday afternoon.

Taylor Swift's voice floated from a radio in the back of the store tuned to a country station as Wilkinson swept the floors after the lunch rush.

That music seems to stand out a little more these days. Fewer voices fill the eatery at lunchtime. Wilkinson isn't cooking as many plates of greens and hamburger steak.

It's all she can do to hang on. Business at Bonnie's Country Kitchen is the worst it has been in the 11 years its doors have been open, with receipts down 70 percent over the last four months.

The reason: Business from the sprawling Plantation Patterns wrought iron furniture factory next door has dried up. Its former parent company, Meadowcraft, was forced into bankruptcy in March and laid off its work force of some 560 people over the summer.

The plant sold Monday to a Georgia-based manufacturing company. Questions now arise over the future of the factory, its former workers and the tiny Randolph County community built on the back of the industry.

The plant reopening would be good news to Wilkinson, who could use the business.

"I had a captured audience all those years. It's not much fun now," she said.

To keep the restaurant's doors open, Wilkinson said she has been burning through cash reserves and buying much of her food locally, in hopes that others in town won't suffer the same fate the factory did.

"I've been hanging in by a toenail," she said. "People have gotten a taste of despair."

'Like a ghost town'

Like many Alabama towns, Wadley's 102-year history is tied to mills. The town was founded in 1907, about a year after the railroad was built along the bank of the Tallapoosa River, according to Randolph County historian Wyner Phillips.

With the area giving people quick access to rail and the river, Phillips said textile magnate Fuller Callaway decided to build a mill there. Callaway never built the mill after a falling out with the town bank's board of directors, but by the time he left town, enough people were living in Wadley to put it on the map for good.

The town's population has hovered around 550 since the 1930s, though today it is bigger than ever with a 2008 Census Bureau estimate of 647 people living there.

Lumber was a significant part of Wadley's economy for many years, and a shirt factory was built there in the 1950s. Around 1963, Wadley-Mann wrought iron furniture plant opened. It's known today as Plantation Patterns.

For years, Plantation Patterns was the largest employer in Randolph County, with at times more than 1,000 workers turning wrought iron into chairs and tables adorning homes and gathering places across America.

But with Meadowcraft carrying a reported debt of nearly $64 million, Wells Fargo & Co. bank, the company's primary lender, forced the manufacturer into bankruptcy in March. Plant employees rallied, hoping its doors would remain open, but a Delaware bankruptcy judge in July ordered the liquidation of Meadowcraft's assets.

Home Casual LLC in July purchased Plantation Patterns' sister factory in Selma, but the Wadley plant remained vacant.

One hundred twenty-seven of Plantation Patterns' approximately 560 workers listed Wadley as an address, which means that fewer people have reason to pass through the town when the factory isn't open.

Chase Brown, a student at Southern Union State Community College's Wadley campus, said the plant's demise made Wadley look like a ghost town.

"It has taken a step back in time," said Brown, 26.

"When I first got out of high school, they had a lot of businesses. Nobody had to worry about having a job," he said. "Back then you could see a lot of cars on the road. Now when you go through town, you see maybe one or two cars."

'It went fast'

Former employees of Plantation Patterns have been struggling as they waited for a buyer to step forward. Now that Atlanta-based Southern Sales & Marketing Group Inc. has bought the Wadley plant, former employees are wondering about their chances of getting jobs on a work force that Randolph County representatives say may be much smaller than before.

Edith Buchanan, 50, of Daviston has been job hunting since she was laid off from the plant in June. The plant was only giving her part-time shifts for the 18 months leading up to its closing. So to help save money, her son had to withdraw from the University of Alabama. Then he was laid off from his part-time job, too.

"It was a domino effect," she said. "It started going downhill, and it went fast."

Buchanan said she applied for jobs in Opelika, Montgomery and LaGrange, Ga., but all of those locations would result in commute times of an hour or more.

"I haven't had much luck. I've had a lot of people say that they would call me back," she said.

Another problem confronting Buchanan is her work experience. Buchanan spent more than 30 years at Plantation Patterns, working in the paint department at the time the plant closed.

"If you lose that particular job, you may not have any particular skills in anything else, so it's kind of hard to get a new job," said Wadley Mayor Jim Dabbs.

If she can't get a job as part of Southern's operations at Plantation Patterns, she's unsure of what else she can do.

"I've got 30 years of experience, but I don't know if that counts for anything with them," she said. "I'm thinking about going into the home health care field; that seems to be the only thing that's got any openings, but I don't have the qualifications."

Brenda Thompson, 52, of Roanoke has gone without her diabetes medication for the past two weeks. When the plant closed, her job of 15 years and her health insurance coverage went with it. Thompson says she's ready to go back to work, but she worries that the plant's new owners won't be interested in workers her age.

"A lot of us had seniority there, but seniority doesn't mean anything now," she said. "They said they were going to give us a date when they'd start accepting applications. Whenever that time comes, I'll go put my application in."

'The beginning of a turnaround'

The town of Wadley has faced financial setbacks of its own since the closing of the plant, losing about $15,000 a month on what would typically be a $65,000 to $70,000 budget for the town.

"Our first hit came back in March, when the plant declared bankruptcy," Mayor Dabbs said.

"(Meadowcraft) owed the town $168,000, and most of that money was frozen by the courts."

A bankruptcy judge in July granted a claim to Wadley for about $31,000 in utility expenses owed by Meadowcraft. That amount represents less than a fifth of the utility costs the town was owed, Dabbs said.

The blow to the town's income has forced it to close its senior center, which town officials said provides meals to about 20 Wadley residents.

If the factory had not sold, Dabbs said the effects would have been "devastating."

"The town (would) have a real hard time surviving," he said. "People have to go where they can find jobs."

With the factory reopening, Randolph County Commissioner Doyle Allen is hopeful the county's 15.1 percent jobless rate will start to come back down.

"We feel like this is the beginning of a turnaround for our county and the beginning of an upswing in the economy," Allen said.

Dabbs met Friday with Southern Sales & Marketing Group founder and owner Ken Harbaugh in Wadley.

The mayor said Harbaugh and a group of company officials came to determine when they could get the factory up and running.

"They said they were happy to be here, and we're happy to have them," he said.

Dabbs said Southern representatives told him they plan to put about 200 people to work, and grow the work force to about 500 within three years.

"They've told me that they're going to try to hire experienced workers, if they can find qualified people who want to work," he said. "They're going to give them first shot at it."

Southern representatives declined comment Friday.

'There's hope'

Edith Buchanan says she's glad the plant was purchased, but she's still skeptical about her chances at getting a job.

"I've just been praying. That's the only positive thing that you can hold on to," she said.

Bonnie Wilkinson said she has seen a number of former plant workers passing by her restaurant on Main Street, headed for the factory in an effort to find information.

"People have been asking me, 'Have you heard anything? Do you know when we can go back to work?'" she said.

Wilkinson said she is eager to see Plantation Patterns reopened and to see people getting back to work.

"They don't need to drag their feet on it," she said as she took a break from cleaning the table tops. "Maybe it'll bring some new blood to Wadley — new ownership, new people to live here."

Southern officials have not yet announced a date when the company will begin taking applications. Still, a sense of relief has washed over town leaders, who wondered how the town might survive without an industry.

"Up until this point, it was pretty somber, but things are optimistic now," Dabbs said. "People are still wondering if they're going to be the ones to go back to work, but there's hope for the first time."