Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, March 1921 · page 7 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #18 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains **no cartoon**—it's a prose piece of nostalgic humor written during **Prohibition** (1920-1933). The author reflects on hearing "Sweet Adeline," a sentimental barbershop quartet standard, sung by drunk motorists leaving local roadhouses (Robbinsdale and Casey's). The satire works on multiple levels: it mourns the "lost art" of drunken group singing now impossible under prohibition's enforcement. The author fondly recalls getting "quite drunk" himself to properly enjoy the experience, naming friends Jack and Bob who sang tenor and bass. The humor is self-aware—celebrating intoxication as essential to sentimental joy. The brief final anecdote (a couple abandoning their car seat while reporting their stolen automobile) appears unrelated, perhaps a running feature of the magazine's humor column. The satire targets both prohibition's impact on American social life and the narrator's own nostalgic tippling.
📄 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 5 A FEW days ago, for the first time in many moons, I heard sweet strains of “Sweet Adeline” coming in a rich soprano, with bass accompani- ment, from a passing automobile on the Whiz Bang farm trail, and it brought me out of my reveries and revived memories of bygone days. Thoughts of the many times I had heard that song along the trail from town, just after the bars of Robbinsdale and Casey’s roadhouse would close, came to me sweetly. This brand of choral singing has become a lost art under prohibition. “Sweet Adeline” as sung by a troop of celebrators who wouldn’t know whether they were standing on their feet or their heads, was very beautiful. To enjoy it thoroughly, one had to be quite drunk himself. Jack would sing the tenor, Bob the bass and I would join in the chorus, in sentimental strain. It was all very touching. With it, nothing can compare. In my memories I can still picture Jack’s tenor squawking “You’re the flower of my heart” and Bob’s bass refrain “Sweet Adeline,” after which came the grand finale. Ah, those were the happy days. * * * The couple that left an automobile seat at the Whiz Bang farm a couple of months ago, while they went to town to report the theft of their automobile, haven’t come back yet, and I don’t know what the deuce to do with the seat.