A NEW RECORD

L LAST August I received a doomsday letter from an alumnus in the oil business (an Independent, need I add) in which, with the typical gusto of his breed, he predicted a depression within 60 days ; foresaw geologists and independents walking the streets (concrete streets) ; advocated cutting in half the number of all O.U . geology majors ; proposed urging nearly all of the remaining majors to work for masters and doctors degrees ; and suggested-as a service to O.U . students and alumni-that I reprint his letter . I nearly wept. That letter had all the earmarks of a rambunctious American type of which I, too, regretfully, predict the worst. They are fading, I swear, away . Independents, God bless them, are as American as Davy Crockett. When they see a bahr, they shoot 'im ; when they smell a pie they eat it ; and when they have a hunch they play it . They are noisier, sadder, greedier, happier, smarter, dumber, more generous, more wasteful, more efficient, and can get things clone quicker and better and with more gall and pride than any humans on the face of the earth . They've pulled us all up to the world's highest standard of living by our greasy, muddy bootstraps . And what it takes to understand them and their success is as American as Spindle top : Cherche, ~ lit franc (pardon the French) . My particular correspondent, and many like him, are having a hard time discovering la franc, or, at least, as many francs as they used to find . Their problem is : The United States, through its major oil companies, has discovered and developed the world's greatest oil reserves . These, to the sorrow of the joint Chiefs of Staff, are outside the United States . Now-considering, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff must every now and thenA New Record Sylvia Zaremba