Houston postcard; an Enron yard sale.(The Talk of the Town)

Ever since Houston's economy shifted, in the nineteen-thirties, from timber and cotton to petrochemicals, people here have accustomed themselves to financial turbulence and its behavioral imperative: standing tough in the face of adversity. Everyone who's anyone has been broke at least once, the thinking goes, so the best thing to do is stop whining, pick yourself up, and start selling assets. John Connally, the former Treasury Secretary, permitted himself only a few tears when bad investments forced him, in 1988, to auction off his Presidential-seal blazer buttons to help pay back the ninety-three million dollars he owed his creditors.

In the wake of the Enron collapse, Texans are once again in a liquidation frame of mind. In January, Linda Lay, the wife of Enron's former chairman, Kenneth Lay, appeared on the "Today" show and wept as she described how she and her family had lost everything. At that point, the Lays had put homes in Galveston and Aspen up for sale, and were living together in a Houston high-rise.

A couple of months later, Mrs. Lay decided that it didn't make sense for her to hold on to all the furnishings from the houses she had lost. "She realized that it is just stuff and someone else might have a use for it," said Kelly Kimberly, a Lay family spokesperson. So now Mrs. Lay is opening a secondhand shop, called Jus' Stuff, which she will stock with the residue of better days.

Jus' Stuff is operating according to two time-honored Houston traditions: putting the best possible face on bad news, and the belief that commerce cures all ills. The shop, which will open to the public in the next few weeks, occupies a building that is owned by Mrs. Lay and that used to house a pet store, called Kennel Town, in the bohemian Houston neighborhood known as Montrose. The Kennel Town storefront has been repainted a tasteful beige and white, and a crisp new black awning hangs above the ...