Life, 1929-07-05 · page 14 of 41
Life — July 5, 1929 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains humorous anecdotes and two cartoon illustrations satirizing early 20th-century American life. The main cartoons depict: 1. **Upper right**: A burglar interrupting a family's Fourth of July celebration, with firecrackers exploding around him—playing on the chaos of holiday fireworks. 2. **Lower section**: A golf club scene where tennis players have apparently joined, creating disorder. The caption jokes: "Good Land, what's this?" / "A couple of tennis players who just joined the club." The anecdotes reference various oddities: a woman who kissed George Washington, record-breaking achievements, and colorful facts (false teeth, billiard fish, shortest English poems, extinct elephants). The humor relies on absurdist observations and visual comedy typical of Life's satirical style during this era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
12 A Best Seller at Home (Believe-It-Or-Not Ripley rocks the baby to sleep) “There, there, ‘ittle Tweetums, be a good boy and Daddy’ll tell him lots of nice stories! ...In the town of Palsy, Ohio, there is a woman 184 years old who has three heads, one of which kissed General Washington . . . For twelve years Joseph Tracoma of Upside Downs, England, has drunk a quart of castor oil daily, breaking the record set by Earl Mastoid of Calcutta, Maine, who has ear lobes three feet long Unfortunate burglar who hap- which he _ pulls pened in on the eve of the tight and uses Glorious Fourth. as a zither . . . William Toddy, aged ninety-cight, call-boy in a Soldiers’ Home, discov- cred one ot his “Else of the Gulf of Labrador, propels itself teeth to be a live through the water by crossing and un- bectle ... The ¢tossing his eyes; it lives upon the dis- Billiard Fish ¢atded combs of beach-combers . . . The shortest poem in the English language is ‘Hiawatha, by H. W. Longfellow and contains only two stanzas, one of which is also the first verse of ‘God Save the King’... An extinct elephant was dug up by workmen in Aspirin Park, N. J.;. he was re- vived at a local hospital and now conducts a filling- station... “There are seven billion people in the world who see black spots before the eyes; four of them are known as Cecil B. De Mille . . . Eskimos, who live in Yonkers, or skin tents, never practice on the trapeze—. . . Why the lit- ue darling’s asleep—and no damn wonder!” —Heman Fay, |r. Presipent or Gore Crus: Good Lawd, what's this? Cappy: A couple of tennis players who just joined the club. comicbooks.com