February 13, 1986

SALLIE and Maynard Langford make a profession of combing the Adirondack back country in their green Chevrolet van, searching out American antiques, objets d'art and, recently, 1940's and 50's furniture. They knock on the doors of strangers, browse through tag sales, rummage through country antiques shops and, sometimes, persuade the owners of large Adirondack camps to part with original pieces. At the western end of New York State, Ron Fitzgerald plies the narrow roads around dairy farms and small villages, hoping to find dusty attics with tiger maple chests and private safes filled with antique jewelry. These people, and scores of others in the Northeast, are known in the antiques trade as ''pickers.''

When the Canadian Government wanted to replenish its reserves of United States dollars two weeks ago, it chose not to borrow in the dollar markets directly but, instead, floated the largest Euroyen issue in history. This 80 billion yen bond offering in Europe - handled by Nomura International, the investment banking arm of Japan's largest securities house -was then swapped into $409 million, giving Canada the dollars it needed at lower interest rates than it could find in the dollar markets. The Canadian offering, and others for such American corporations as International Business Machines, Dow Chemical and United Technologies, is typical of deals that have made Japanese securities firms and banks a fast-growing force in the Euromarkets, the London-based hub of international finance. ''The Japanese have become much more aggressive and professional recently,'' said Robin Miller, chief of the Canadian finance department's debt management unit.

Concerned that oil prices may stay at their current depressed levels for much of the year, the Atlantic Richfield Company said yesterday that it had cut its 1986 budget for capital spending to $2 billion from $3.6 billion. Analysts reached yesterday said the reduction, the largest such cut by a major oil company in recent memory, underscores the growing impact that the sharp decline in oil prices is having on the energy industry. Further, the analysts said that the Atlantic Richfield action indicates that falling prices are leading companies to abandon. at least temporarily, their plans to explore for oil and maintain their production levels. The sharpest cuts by the Los Angeles-based Arco are in exploration and production in the continental United States, where production costs are among the world's highest.

Law-enforcement officials said last night that up to 50 employees of Eastern Airlines faced indictments stemming from an investigation of a drug-smuggling operation that began last August. Robert Feldkamp, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington, confirmed that 50 employees of an airline were likely to be arrested for their involvement in a drug smuggling operation but he declined to name the airline. However, airline industry sources and Federal law-enforcement officials who spoke on the condition that they not be identified confirmed that the carrier was Eastern Airlines. The sources said Eastern officials had been working with investigators for more than a year in trying to break up the ring.

Anatoly B. Shcharansky, describing his release from a Soviet labor camp, said today that he had flung himself into the snow and refused to continue on his way because his escorts tried to confiscate a book of Psalms that his wife had sent him from Israel. ''They took all my possessions from me,'' he said on Israeli television, speaking in Hebrew. ''I said I would not leave the country without the Psalms, which helped me so much. I lay down in the snow and said, 'Not another step.' ''