Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, July 1921 · page 6 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #22 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from the satirical magazine contains three unrelated humorous anecdotes rather than cartoons: 1. **Indian courtship ritual**: A folksy story about Native American dating customs involving tom-tom drumming and snow-shoes as rejection signals. This reflects early 20th-century stereotypical depictions of Indigenous peoples common in popular magazines. 2. **Lost brooch advertisement**: A joke about "Maggie," the cookhouse chef, who lost a cameo brooch depicting Venus and Adonis—classical gods of love—suggesting her romantic entanglement. 3. **Deacon Callahan prank**: The main joke here is situational humor: a religious deacon ("Deacon") hides to surprise-kiss his wife, expecting shock. Instead, she warns him not to be "bold" because locals know her reputation—implying she's either well-known or her respectability is at stake. The humor derives from her concern about public appearance rather than marital affection. These are lighthearted, community-focused anecdotes typical of early 20th-century American satirical magazines targeting rural or small-town audiences.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
4 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang WHILE at my Breezy Point cabin resort at Pequot I heard an interesting story regarding the manner in which young Indian men woo their sweethearts, When the Indian feels a tug at his heart he will station himself with a tom-tom in front of the tepee of his beloved and beat frantically on the drum affair. If the girl loves him she comes out and the medicine man does the rest. If she scorns his love she places a snow-shoe at the wigwam entrance and the young chief goes back to his own tepee and keeps on beat- ing his tom-tom until some squaw girl takes pity and marries him. * * * MAGGIE, our new harvest cookhouse chef, lost her brooch the other night, so she has pre- pared the following advertisement for the Whiz Bang: “LOST—A cameo brooch representing Venus and Adonis on the Robbinsdale road about ten o’clock on Wednesday evening.” * * * WE’VE had a good laugh on our neighbor, Dea- con Callahan, since the episode several of us witnessed in front of the Palace Shoe Store in Robbinsdale the other evening. The Deacon saw his wife coming down the street, so he hid in the doorway of the Palace. When she passed him, he jumped out suddenly and kissed her. Instead of the scream he expected, she hoarsely whispered: “Don’t be so bold, mister. Folks ’round here know me.”