Trustworthy Hardware

Menford’s Trustworthy Hardware on US Highway 12 at Niobrara has closed. The building, just under four thousand square feet, was later sold, and the sale listing states plainly that the business is no longer operating. Its recent history is worth recording. It was run by Mike Keeler until his death from cancer in 2009, and was bought that autumn by John Pinkelman and his wife, who also ran Menford Electric and Hardware at Fordyce, an electrical business started in 1992 that took a Main Street storefront in 2008, and who opened a third store at Wynot in April 2011. The group employed seventeen people and served a fifty-mile radius. Pinkelman put the reason for buying it simply: the economic impact in our communities is so very real, and we need to do something to keep people here.