Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, July 1921 · page 40 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #22 — page 40: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a 1920s men's humor magazine) presents bawdy poems marketed as "Smokehouse Poetry"—crude, risqué verses for male readership, typically shared in informal settings like barrooms. The poems satirize exotic colonial fantasies. "The Far East" excerpt mocks American soldiers' experiences in the Philippines (likely from the Philippine-American War era), depicting stereotypical interactions with Filipino women. The phrase "goo-goo" was a period slur for Filipinos; "malo soldier" and "jaw-bone" suggest broken English and unpaid debts to local women. The first poem excerpt similarly romanticizes tropical violence in colonial settings (chicle and logwood were trade commodities from Central America). The tone is juvenile, irreverent humor aimed at working-class male audiences—typical of this magazine's appeal. The "Hoboes' Convention" piece below continues this vein of satirizing marginalized social groups for comic effect.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
38 Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang Smokehouse Poetry Whiz Bang has a double-winner for Smokehouse fans next issue! “The Lure of the Tropics” and “The Far East.” “O’er chicle camps and logwood swamps I hunted him many a moon, Then found my man in a long pit pan At the edge of a blue lagoon. “The chase was o’er at the farther shore; It ended a two-year quest, And I left him there with an empty stare And a knife stuck in his chest.” That’s the swing of the most noted poem of the tropics. “The Far East,” an excerpt from which fol- lows, is familiar to Philippine war veterans: “By the mud hole down in Subic Looking lazy at the bay, There’s a goo-goo dame awaiting, And I think I hear her say: ‘Come you back you malo soldier Come you back from o’er the sea, Come you back and pay your jaw-bone, Por-a-que! You jaw-bone me?’” The Hoboes’ Convention By George Liebst You have heard of big conventions, And there’s some you can’t forget,