Hope for any new jobs depends on the opening next year of a 1,600-bed maximum security state prison up the road at Licking, Missouri, which says something about 1999 America. Rents in out-state Missouri don't begin to cover premiums. So you'd expect a lot of long faces around Houston. Hey, look at all those neat people out there. And the residents, somehow, are smiling, too, which also says something about 1999 America, and the resiliency of ordinary people.
Hard times come and go.
The trick is to survive. Probably only a clown. And one in particular. Houston is the hometown of Emmett Kelly. Weary Willie, America's most famous clown, with his woeful, joyless face, tattered outfit, and his cachet of attempting to sweep away spotlights with his broom.