TRENTON – Josephine
Brincat says goodbye to another customer and looks at the dwindling contents of
her warehouse.

It’s a warehouse that used to be
chocked full of every kind of feed and seed supply
imaginable.

Now all sales are final – and cash
only.

She thinks of this and says she
feels like crying again.

But then the tears won’t
come.

“I’ve cried so much already,” she
said Friday afternoon. “It’s so sad. It’s
depressing.”

But they may yet come again.

Within
the next month or so the doors to Double HH Feed & Supply – yet another
victim of a ravaged American economy – will close its
doors.

Mrs. Brincat says she and her
husband, Anthony, who have owned the business since November of 2005, should
have closed last year.

“We really should have closed last
year, but we were just trying to hold on and hoping things would turn around,”
she said. “But things never turned around and not only that, they got worse. I
love my customers and that was part of why we held on so long, and we love it.
But we just couldn’t do it anymore. No one is immune from this crazy economy –
no one is.”

For a while now, customers have brought in stories of own hard times and less
business.

“People are just shutting down and
selling everything they have,” she said. “And these are people who know what
they’re doing. Everybody is getting rid of everything. The customers are upset,
but they understand. One lady was in here crying with me. It’s sad. Every week I
hear about someone else who has lost their job.”

So the end finally came over dinner
last week.

Her husband looked across the dinner
table and said that was it.

“He told me we were going to have to
close,” she said. “We couldn’t hold on anymore.”

* Read the rest of this story in the 3/11 edition of The Citizen News.