Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, May 1921 · page 9 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #20 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains four humorous anecdotes from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang*, a satirical magazine known for rural Americana humor. **Pedro the Bull**: A joke about Gus, the farm's hired man, charging admission to see a prize bull. A visitor with nine children asks the cost; Gus admits them free, saying he wants Pedro to see such an unattractive family—implying their appearance would be amusing to the animal. **Texas Girls & Lollipops**: A light joke about young women in Texas loving candy so much it ruins their hair, framed as complaints from lovesick men. **The Abandoned Car Seat**: Dry humor about a couple who abandoned their car at the farm while reporting it stolen. The magazine keeps the useless seat, noting it's worthless without the vehicle. **Gus's Vices**: A satirical portrait of the hired man as morally flexible—progressing from gambling to drinking bootleg whiskey, with a comment that his weakness isn't women (implying that's the only vice preventing greater ruin). The humor targets rural life, hired help, and Depression-era vice culture.
📄 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 7 PEDRO, famous pedigreed bull of the Whiz Bang farm, has quite a reputation as a county fair prize winner. Gus, the hired man, decided he’d make a few extra dollars one week while I was “tooting it up” in Minneapolis, so he started charging admission to the many who came to view the noble animal. A visitor approached Gus the first day of admis- sion charges and inquired as to the cost for himself, wife and nine children, for viewing the bull. “Not a cent,” promptly replied our faithful man. “Come right in; I want Pedro to see you.” * * * THE girls of Texas, we judge from correspondents, are madly in love with the confection known as the lollypop or all-day sucker. We’ve received several complaints from love-lorn swains requesting that we ask the Texas girls to protect their tresses from the sticky lollypops. * * * SO many Whiz Bang readers have requested that we send them the automobile seat left on our farm by a daring couple while they hiked to Robbins- dale, to report the theft of their motor car, that we have decided to retain it. An auto seat, you know, is value- less without the car. * * * GUS is a progressive hired man. He progresses from penny ante to nickel heart games to two- bit moonshine. It’s a good thing he’s not very strong for the ladies. He has plenty of bad habits now.