Famous last words in an oil town: This boom will be different.

As crude prices fall, long memories in the biggest oil town of them all are turning to the devastating bust of the 1980s, when one of every seven people lost their jobs.

From the archives: Look back at a special section from 1985 on Houston and the oil bust of the ‘80s

It was a time of bankruptcies and foreclosures, For Sale signs and empty office towers, loan defaults and failed banks. Phones were cut off and trucks repossessed. The city reduced garbage pickup. Church charities fed 300,000 families in 1986, twice as many as the previous year. Eighty-four children checked in at the Star of Hope shelter downtown on Christmas Eve.

"It was kind of scary," said Jim Lefton, a steel union leader who worked for a chemical company back then. "Our whole economy was and is built on oil and energy. When you saw all the layoffs happening, it was like, 'When am I going to be next?'"

Hardly anybody expects such an abrupt end to the latest hole-digging contest in the state's oil fields. Much domestic production may remain profitable, experts say, even if crude falls well below the closing price of $81.01 on Friday.

But the moment has called out a serious gut check in Houston, where pride always comes before the fall, and often after. Some say efforts to expand the regional economy beyond its reliance on the energy industry have succeeded. Others disagree. There is really only one way to find out, and it has been a long time coming.

'Never again'

The oil bust that rocked Houston in the early 1980s left officials calling for greater diversification in the city's economy. Mounting unemployment was the worst since the 1930s. Saudi Arabia and its partners in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries had expanded production to protect their market share. As oil prices collapsed, real estate developers were stuck with 187,000 new homes and 116 million square feet of new office space.

Never again, city leaders vowed, promising to expand the Texas Medical Center, attract international business, host more conventions and bring different kinds of jobs to town.

To that end, though, the tools of government are limited. The tax incentive game can become so competitive no one wins. So Houston has also worked to open new parks, build a rail system and promote the arts.

"That's been our particular focus," said Andy Icken, the city's chief development officer, who has his own memories of scrambling at Exxon in the 1980s. "We can't modify the weather."

Despite all the unvanquished heat and humidity, civic boosters do have plenty to brag about. The Memorial Hermann Health System, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Houston Methodist have become major local employers, together accounting for 55,000 jobs. A slower pace of speculative construction has also left real estate markets less vulnerable than in the 1980s. Still, fast-rising home prices, especially in pricey neighborhoods inside the 610 loop, have more than a few Houstonians worried that a possible real estate bubble could burst if oil prices plummet.

Patrick Jankowski, an economist at the Greater Houston Partnership, which promotes investment in the city, isn't overly concerned. "I don't see the hubris," he said. "People are more cautious now."

State of other sectors

But other efforts to expand the job base have produced mixed results. Wal-Mart and H.E.B. have become two of the biggest employers. United Airlines ranks high on the list, but makes its headquarters in Chicago, where it chose to remain after merging with a locally based competitor, Continental. The presence of Compaq Computer, founded here in 1982, diminished when the company was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. NASA's ambitions faded, and the private space industry has taken flight elsewhere. Ship channel trade has expanded modestly. A mechanical engineering sector has announced itself.

In several interviews on the topic of economic diversification, some of the city's most prominent cheerleaders mentioned the medical center expansion, then trailed off.

"You want to know why that is?" asked Jesse Thompson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. "When you do the analysis, and you want to see how much of the economy in Houston is really tied to the energy industry, we don't have the data for that."

For example: How many lawyers, accountants and web designers are doing how much work for energy firms? No one can say for sure.

At least 38 percent

By the count of the Greater Houston Partnership, a robust 38 percent of local economic activity still comes from the energy sector. That figure does include some directly related businesses, like pipe manufacturers, that do not show up in the mining category of government statistics.

But the city's indirect connections to the oil boom are hard to miss. Forget, for a moment, the lawyers, accountants and web designers. Even Waste Connections, a local garbage company that operates in rural markets, told investors last week that it will depend on the oil boom to raise earnings.

For better or for worse, a certain image remains fixed. Over the past four years, energy firms dominated 80 percent of local corporate expansions and relocations, the commercial real estate firm CBRE said in a recent report. In a luncheon speech last week, Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil chief, called Houston "the center of the energy universe."

Some independent economists consider the city well prepared for a bust. Moody's Investors Service calls the local outlook stable. Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at SMU, says energy industry layoffs would most likely target older workers who "will still be located in Texas, or Houston, shopping at the grocery stores and generating significant economic activity as retirees."

Others have their doubts. Bill Gilmer, an economist at the University of Houston, argues that low natural gas prices have funneled an unhealthy majority of energy industry investment into oil production. Even those ever-expanding health care jobs, in his view, depend on finding more patients among all the new arrivals recruited to the oil industry.

Chance to catch up

Still, to the silver lining spotters at the Greater Houston Partnership, falling oil prices may give the city a chance to catch up with the pace of growth, making infrastructure repairs and building new schools.

And if the whole town does go down in an oil bust tomorrow, "Texans have a way of surviving and bouncing back," said the cultural historian Don Graham. "Houston has always seemed to me the most optimistic of Texas cities, because whatever happens, they find a way to keep prospering and keep growing."