Houston’s Enron Tour: Inside the Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 01.30.06 | 11:40 PM ET
Former Enron bigwigs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling face fraud charges this week in a Houston, Texas federal courtroom, or, as Sandra Lord likes to think of the building, the final showstopper on a $30 tour of landmarks in one of the U.S.‘s most shameful business sagas.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Patti Bond wrote a terrific story about Lord and her unorthodox tour of Enron-related sites.
The itinerary closely follows “Conspiracy of Fools” by New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, who laid out the habits of Enron’s Houstonians in painstaking detail.
Count the tour as the G-rated version of Enron lore.
Instead of strip clubs, Lord makes a stop at the store formerly known as Jus’ Stuff, made famous when Ken Lay’s wife, Linda, opened it as a secondhand shop to unload knickknacks and antiques from the family portfolio of vacation homes.
Now known as Import Warehouse, the new owners sell furnishings from India and Indonesia.
The only sign of Linda Lay is a staircase she had installed at the store. Not to worry, Lord says. “The senior citizens on the tour love to window-shop, so they’ll love this.”
One of the highlights of the tour is a chance to view the “Crooked E,” a 5-by-5-foot “gleaming hunk of stainless steel” bought at auction for $44,000 in 2002 by the owner of the MicroCache Computer store, Jimmy Luu. It’s on display inside the store, in a room of its own, under spotlights.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
