For 70 years, manufacturing Vise-Grips has been the economic core of the village of Dewitt. Over the years, it has provided solid jobs for thousands of small-town workers. But global competition has taken over the Vise-Grip plant.

To employees Vise-Grip plant was more than a factory. It was more than a workplace. It was a home for workers like David Kujath who considered his coworkers family.

"It's pretty tough," Kujath said. "It's not easy. You've been here all your life. So, you live on."

Kujath worked for Vise-Grip for 33 years. He retired in June after rumors of the plant's closing began to circulate.

On Halloween evening the plant will go quiet when the factory closes it doors in Dewitt.

So quiet, in fact, that one might be able to hear even a mocking whisper of "Trick or Treat."

James Prokop said it's difficult to find the "treat" in this ordeal.

In his 33 year career at Vise-Grip, Prokop has seen plants across the US close. But he never thought it would strike this close to home.

"It's a very sad deal because what are the people in this area going to do for a living," Prokop said. "There ain't that many jobs around here in an area like this."

Harriet Petersen Fort's father, William Petersen, invented the Vise-Grip in 1924.

"I'm devastated to think that this wonderful organization is leaving our community," Petersen Fort said.

Her family owned and operated the company until 2002 when they sold it to Irwin Industrial Tools.

"It's the end of an era," Petersen Fort said. "It's the end of. I don't know. It just hit me- what a diamond it was."

Now Irwin Industrial is moving its operations to China. With it will go more than 300 small town jobs; and a piece of Nebraska's industrial legacy.

"It was - 80 years ago when it started - a family type deal," Kujath said. "And that's what you felt like when you went to work there."

And with a smile and a wave Friday 330 workers said goodbye to their jobs, their friends and the legacy that put Dewitt on the map.

While the Vise-Grip plant has closed its doors, Petersen Fort hopes another company will take over the factory.

Otherwise, she fears this town, which means so much to her, could dry up.