Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, March 1921 · page 39 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #18 — page 39: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a narrative poem rather than a cartoon. It tells the story of a mysterious, haggard stranger who enters a bar—a scene suggesting the Yukon gold rush era or frontier setting. The poem depicts a man who appears spiritually broken ("lived in hell"), watches a woman named Lou, and eventually sits at a piano where he plays with surprising skill despite his disreputable appearance. The narrative then shifts to philosophical commentary about a different kind of hunger—existential rather than physical—evoked by the isolation and hardship of gold prospecting in the far north, under the Northern lights. The satire appears directed at romanticized notions of frontier life and gold-rush mythology. The poem suggests that material pursuits (gold) and physical survival mask deeper spiritual emptiness and psychological toll. The "muck, called gold" phrase indicates cynicism toward the enterprise itself. *Whiz Bang* was known for humorous and satirical content mixing poetry, jokes, and social commentary for a post-WWI American audience.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 37 There are men that somehow just grip your eyes And hold them hard like a spell, And such was he for he looked to me Like a man who had lived in hell. With a face most hair, and a glassy stare Like a dog whose day is done As he watered the green stuff in his glass And the drops fell one by one. Then I got to figuring who he was And wondering what he'd do When I turned, and there stood watching him Was the Lady, who was known as Lou. The stranger's eyes wandered round the room And seemed in a kind of a daze Till at last that old piano fell In the way of his wandering gaze. The Rag-time Kid was having a drink There was no one else on the stool And the stranger stumbled across the room And flopped down there like a fool. In a buck-skin shirt that was glazed with dirt He sat and I seen him sway With a talon hand he clutched the keys God, but that man could play. Were you ever out on the great alone, When the night was awful clear And the icy mountains held you in With a silence that you most could hear. With only the howl of a timber wolf As you camped out there in the cold A half-dead thing in a stark dead world Clean mad, for the muck, called gold. While high overhead green, yellow, and red The Northern lights swept in bars Then you've a hunch what the music meant Hunger night, and the stars. Hunger, not of the belly kind That's banished with bacon and beans.