Judge, 1927-02-12 · page 20 of 36
Judge — February 12, 1927 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This humorous short story satirizes early 20th-century polar exploration mania—a popular cultural obsession following real expeditions to the North and South Poles. The joke centers on the narrator and his friend Rodney planning an Arctic expedition with characteristic incompetence. The satire works on multiple levels: they're so poorly prepared they must travel to New York first; their "packing" consists entirely of alcohol (Green Stripe bottles); and rather than embarking immediately, they spend their time drinking, becoming progressively less capable. The cartoonist mocks both the frivolous enthusiasm for dangerous exploration and the drunken leisure of affluent American men who treat extreme adventures as casual social outings. The accompanying illustration shows three men in a theater, discussing ticket prices—a separate, unrelated vignette. The bottom caption about Florida city planning appears to be filler content typical of Judge magazine's format.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
JUDGE if | i Now ee My Dash for the Pole rep, will you make a dash to the North Pole with me?” The speaker was none other than my friend Rodney Giblet, bosom companion of a hundred arduous explorations, with whom I had traversed the aming jungles of Central America, the icy tundras of northern Siberia, and the impregnable summits of the Hin “Will I?” I asked, “Rodney, old man, let’s start now, before anybody else gets there. But we shall first have to go to New York.” “Why?” “Because we are now in At- lanta, Georgia,” I replied, thus letting you, gentle reader, know just where we were at the time. “All right,” said Rodney, and inquired Rodney. Fast Row ¢ AIS)E - OnLy FIFTEEN BUCKS ONE IN THE Thor , BuDDY- ONLY TWELVE SMACKERS we went about our packing im- mediately. We packed only our first-aid kit of five bottles of Green Stripe and secured our reservations on the Orange Blos- som Express. Four days later we walked out of Pennsyly tion and into our hotel. Or our room, I hung up my clea shirt in a closet and put my clean collar under the bed, safe from prying e 5 “Now,” I. said, rubbing my hands and turning to Rodney, “let us drink to the success of our venture!” “T've thought of that,” de- clared Rodney, “in fact, I've al- ready rung for cracked ice and ginger ale.” A moment later Rodney blending ah nding one I said, raising my ve you the North “Keep it, old friend,” said Rodney magnanimously, “I don't want the So we filled the glasses again and drank to a speedy trip. About this time we began to feel thirsty, so we refilled the glasses and had a drink. The effort was so exhausting that we decided to have a drink. Just then there (Continued on page 25) One of the chief difficulties, according to a Floridian is, that in planning cities there, everything is prone to take root and grow. comicbooks.com