Slapout, Oklahoma

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Slapout is a small community in Beaver County, Oklahoma. My father,Joseph L. Johnston was a real hero to travelers heading west during the early thirties. As the owner of the Slapout Grocery and Service Station many folks were heading to the west coast to find employment and to get away from the bad dust storms. Most were broke and asked my dad for gasoline and groceries with the promise that they would send him payment when they found employment on the west coast. My father could not say no. When he was killed in an automobile accident we went through his books at his grocery store and discovered that almost 100 percent of these folks actually did send their payment when they found work. He had become affectionately known as Slapout Joe throughout the entire Oklahoma Panhandle with large writeups in the Daily Oklahoman and the Tulsa World newspapers. He actually started the town on the northwest corner of the land he had acquired with a government claim in 1904, three years before Oklahoma became a state. He and my mother, Edith Mae, were real pioneers in the settlement of the Oklahoma Panhandle. Incidentally, the name <Slapout> came about in the early days of the grocery when there was not a very large stock and when a customer would ask for something that was not available, the answer would be: <Sorry we are just Slapout of that item>, The customers soon started calling the place Slapout and my dad had a large sign painted and installed in the front of the build- ing that read <Slapout Grocery and Service Station>. Joseph L. Johnston III