HASTINGS - It's been a rail hub and one of Nebraska's most muscular manufacturing towns. Now Hastings is faced with a lot of heavy lifting to save its reputation.

Today's closing of its largest manufacturing employer, Armour-Eckrich, costs 370 meatpacking jobs.

Meanwhile, the second largest manufacturing presence in this town of 25,000, Premium Protein Products, has not operated its meatpacking lines since early June. And doubts are mounting that its 260 employees will ever be called back from a furlough that was just extended to July 28.

Images are crucial to communities. And despite a national recession, Hastings' industrial development director plans to use his 30 years of experience to try to turn this challenge into an opportunity.

"Obviously, we've got a hiccup to take care of," said Dee Haussler, "just like anybody else."

Other residents, including Ramon Guerrero, use much more graphic words to describe what's happened to a largely Hispanic work force that's used to bending its collective back 100 miles southwest of Lincoln.

"It's a terrible situation now," said Guerrero, 63, as he checked in with friends at the Sanchez Plaza Restaurant and Market in downtown Hastings Wednesday. "Many people, no work."

In 20 years in town, Guerrero said, he has worked at both of the shuttered plants - the former Monfort plant recently devoted to Armour-Eckrich bacon, meatballs and other value-added products, and the Premium Protein slaughter operation, which emphasizes identity-preserved beef.

Without those options for entry-level, unskilled job applicants, "there's nothing here," he said. He's sure male workers without family obligations and without nest eggs are already leaving town.

A few industries seem relatively immune to hard times. Meatpacking is not.

And both Premium Protein, which also has about 60 people on its Lincoln payroll, and Smithfield, which owns Armour-Eckrich, are vulnerable.

Premium Protein has been trying to cater to consumers in the United States and overseas who are willing to pay more for meat that could be traced all the way back to the farm. Now many of those potential customers are probably looking for the cheapest hamburger instead.

Meanwhile, Smithfield has seen the need to slim down by trying to sell six plants, including the one in Hastings, as part of a $125 million austerity plan.

For many displaced workers, what's ahead might be more about survival than savings.

In between phone calls about a van with a dead battery, Tom Schik of Catholic Social Services acknowledges increasingly desperate circumstances for both families and for the community safety net.

"Families are coming to us requesting assistance for rent and utilities," Schik said. "And the significance of the more recent requests is that they're considerably higher in terms of dollars.

"In other words, people are in greater trouble, deeper trouble than they have been in the past."

They often ask for $500 or $600. Those responding can offer only $75 or $100.

"It's already beyond our ability," Schik said, "because the dollar requests are already beyond what we can handle."

The effect of industry downsizing on school enrollments may not be known until school starts, but "it will hit Hastings hard, definitely, because the loss of jobs, the loss of salaries will have an impact on all the businesses in the community."

David Dirks reacts cautiously, at first, when asked to weigh in on the dilemma in the meatpacking industry.

But the president and general manager of Custom Pack Inc. eventually agrees to sit down in the office of a small family business on Hastings' south side that specializes in beef, buffalo and other fresh and processed meat merchandise.

Custom Pack has been around since 1947. It offers a historical vantage point and a physical vantage point because it's just a few blocks away from Premium Protein.

Dirks also speaks as a wholesale customer of Premium Protein.

"They had an excellent product, an excellent product," he said. "I will miss having that product available."

Asked to assess what's ailing the industry, Dirks doesn't have to consult a crib sheet.

He speaks first of the loss of income from selling cattle hides for upholstery in luxury cars and upscale furniture.

"The hide market is non-existent," he said.

The meat exporting outlook isn't much better. "Worldwide is in just as glum shape as our economy," he said, "so they're not importing American beef."

Back downtown, former meatpacking worker Jamie Serrano just started his own car sales and car repair business a few months ago.

Serrano casts a hungry and impatient eye toward the take-out food that's just arrived for lunch. He's so busy getting dents out of cars hit by a recent hailstorm that he barely has time to eat it.

But he shakes his head as he describes displaced workers who have shown up trying to get on his payroll. He can't afford to hire them.

Dirks said the economy will improve eventually. When it does, meatpackers will realize Hastings has an available beef slaughter plant, an empty and sizable meat processing plant, and a big cold storage business on the north end of town.

"Everything," he said, "is here."

Industrial development honcho Haussler is quick to agree.

"As a community," he said, "we've got our head high. There's nothing wrong with these plants other than the economic times. And management had to make some decisions."

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.