In Tulsa last week tinsel decorations stretched across the main streets, and in Oklahoma City shoppers shivered against the cold. Outside the cities and towns, over stick-straight highways and the winding side roads, fast automobiles and trucks sped on late-night runs from close-to-the-border cities in Missouri and Texas. Artfully dodging police prowl cars, they slipped into Tulsa and Oklahoma City bringing bootlegged Scotch at $7 a fifth, vodka at $5.50 and gin at $5. Admiring the tinsel, feeling the cold, buying the whisky (in gift decanters), Oklahomans knew that the Christmas season was in full swing.
Last (with Mississippi) of...