MATTOON - Discovering that the world of work thinks you're history is not an experience Larry McNeilus treasures.

He had worked at Mattoon's former Blaw-Knox asphalt paver plant for 20 years and made the grade, rising to be senior buyer. In 2003, the plant reached the end of the road and closed. McNeilus found himself standing suddenly on the other side of the gates and looking for a job nobody wanted to give him.

"Well, I can't really blame people for saying no to a guy my age," said the 61-year-old. "But it's hard. You think you're worth something, and then it's like you're not worth anything - nobody wants you."

"For about two weeks after he was done working, he was really depressed," said his wife, Debbie McNeilus, 55. She sympathized but had problems of her own: She was the general accounting manager at Blaw-Knox and also found herself needing a new career path.

Now the couple is betting the answer to their collective future lies in the past, having bought a former American Legion Hall in downtown Mattoon and turning it into Past and Present Antiques mall, which they launched in November.

"It's not a real big money-making business, and it's really hard work," Debbie McNeilus said. "But it's also fun working for yourself, and I love antiques and collectibles."

She has since gotten a full-time job working as inventory manager for a fuel distributor but is about to burn her bridges there and join her husband full time at the mall.

"Larry always says life is too short not to do what you want to do," she said. "So, we are." It's been slow going, but they've got space rented to nine dealers so far and have ambitious plans to set out a virtual stall in the eBay marketplace, too.

Her husband, who didn't know too much about antiques, has been getting a crash course manning the mall sales counter five days a week. He's also found time to refurbish four apartments upstairs, and his sense of self-worth is rising.

"There are still days when I don't know if we're right, wrong or in between in doing all this," he says. "But it's coming along, and I think we're right; we're also having fun meeting just the nicest people."

He means upbeat folks like antiques dealer Kathryn Kermicle, who has overcome odds that make the roadblocks in other people's lives seem trivial.

"I got cancer in 2000, and the doctors told me I had but six months to live," says Kermicle, 78. "I told them they were liars, I had too much to do to die. And then in January last year, they found it in my lungs, and they said I probably had nine months. Well, I said I still got too much to do, I can't die yet."

And then in the next breath, she's praising the McNeiluses, saying this is the prettiest mall she's ever been in, and Larry McNeilus' heightened sense of customer service is winning hearts and minds. "They're doing a great job," she said.

Larry McNeilus shakes his head in wonder at Kermicle and smiles at the compliments. He says his kids and family also have been supportive since the launch of the antiques mall and have told him how proud they are.

"And they never said that when we were at Blaw-Knox," he said.

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@;herald-review.com or 421-7977.