Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, May 1921 · page 49 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #20 — page 49: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical attack on Prohibition and "blue laws" (moral legislation restricting alcohol). The unnamed narrator complains that pre-Prohibition beer was safe, but modern bootleg liquor is dangerously adulterated ("snuff, ground glass and paint"). The piece mocks both Prohibition's consequences and its enforcement: one drink causes such violent intoxication that the narrator wrecks a place, gets beaten by police (who sit on his brow, kick him), and faces arrest alongside ninety others. His friends must pay an enormous "$30,000" fine for bail. The satire cuts multiple ways—criticizing dangerous black-market alcohol, brutal police response to drunkenness, and the absurdity of laws that created this chaos. For modern readers: this reflects genuine 1920s Prohibition-era dangers, when unregulated bootleg alcohol actually did contain toxic additives, and police violence during alcohol-related arrests was common.
📄 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 47 Budd's Bundle of Bunk BY BUDD L. McKILLIPS Author of “After the Raid” THIS talk of blue laws gets my goat; reformers make me sore. I’d like to take them by the throat and kick them through the door. Time was I used to drink some beer, and maybe sing a song—perhaps I got soused once a year, and didn’t think it wrong. But now if I desire a drink, some basement I must find, and if I get by with a wink perhaps I may go blind. The beer I drank was harmless stuff, ’twas made of hops and grain; the hootch today is made of snuff, ground glass and paint and rain. Three weeks ago I took a drink—just one, I took no more; if I had two I really think I’d whipped an army corps. The one I took was bad enough, it stood me on my neck, and then I started to get rough and made the place a wreck. Somebody called three policemen in, they sat upon my brow and kicked me underneath the chin—I’ve got the marks there now. A riot call brought out more troops who battered me with clubs, then locked me in the city coops with ninety other dubs. My friends chipped in and paid my fine of thirty thousand bucks, the doctors patched my head and