AMERICA AT HOME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 118, 21 May 1934, Page 5

AMERICA AT HOME.

"A REAL COWBOY."

INDIANS ON THE ROAM.

(By HOWARD VINCENT O'BRIEN.)

TULSA (Okla.). I had been told that Tulsa was a frontier town, full of Indians and cowboys. Stopping a young woman in silk stockings and a Paris hat, who was just getting out of a limousine, I asked her where I could find an Indian. "In front of a cigar store," she answered sweetly. So giving up my pursuit of Indians I went after a cowboy. I asked several people, without success. Finally, however, a man told me he had i just seen a cowboy, going into a drug, store. I explained that I didn't want wooden Indians or drug store cowboys— I had to have real ones. 1 He assured me that this one was entirely real, so I went into the drug store. And there, sure enough, was a cowboy, complete with high-heeled boots, chaps, ten-gallon hat and six-shooter. He was perched on a stool, eating a chocolate ice cream soda. "Are you a real cowboy?'.' I inquiredj politely. "Certainly I'm real," he answered, sliding off his stool with a jingle of spurs. "But I haven't time to talk to you now. I'm in a show at the Eialto and I go on in two minutes." Finding the Indians. I found the real Indians further north,

in the Osage country. There they live at ease on the pi - oceeds of the oil taken from their lands —or did, while the oil business was good. Like the rest of the country, their life is simpler now. In the town of Pawhuska, fifty miles from Tulsa, the streets are full of Indians, roaming about in their cars. One squaw with plucked eyebrows and jouged clieekSjjii a shinjr new limousine^

did her roaming directly in front of me, and if it hadn't been for my hydraulic brakes, I would have become more deeply involved in the Indian problem than I had any desire to be. Most of the Indians spent their money while they had it; and are now taking in washing to buy gas for "their multicylindered cars. Some of them, however, prepared for the rainy day, saved their money and educated their children. ,On the whole, they seem to have behaved very much as the palefaces did. From the Notebook. Fred Instill, eminent Oklahoma public utility magnate, seems to have nothing in common with his wandering uncle but the name. He ie as affable as hw seafaring relative was arrogant. He .is not a promoter; he is an operating executive, who worke far harder, I was told, then any of hie subordinates work. Active in civic affairs, he was recently voted Tulsa's most valuable citizen. Tulea is a brand-new city, and clean, as only a smokeless town can be. It was born in 1905, didn't really begin to grow until 1923, and now has 175,00(1 people. But that doesn't satisfy the boosters, and a campaign is now on to make it bigger and (presumably) better. It is a one-industry town, entirely ■ dependent on the oil business. The last few years haven't been eo good, with oil selling at ten cents a barrel. It is up to 4/ now, which is cheering; but it hae to go beyond 8/, they say, before anyone will be buying pearls. It is an office town, and practically everyone in it came from somewhere else. Until recently, practically everyone in it was also going somewhere else. Xow, however, there are signs that the transients are taking root. Oklahoma, it might surprise you to know, ranks fourth among the States in the value of its natural resources, being topped only by Pennsylvania, Texas and California. Another remarkable thing about it is the fact that it hasn't yet got around to repealing prohibition. It remains one of the few spots where the bootlegger and the hip flask still flourish. In one of the hill counties there was a round-up of bandits the other day. The sheriff said that if bootleggers were molested the livelihood of many of the inhabitants would be destroyed, ami many people put to great inconvenience. His protest was heeded, and the hunt was confined to bandits.—iX.A;SkA.j, g