Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, July 1921 · page 8 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #22 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two humorous anecdotes from a WWI-era satirical magazine. **The Evans Story**: A drunk military officer (Lieutenant Evans) returns from leave and mistakes his colonel for a mess hall orderly, rudely demanding food. The humor lies in Evans' progressive realization of his error as he hiccups through increasingly apologetic rank corrections ("orderly"→"major"→"colonel"). The satire mocks both military hierarchy and drunken behavior, playing on the contrast between Evans' initial assumption and the colonel's dignified restraint. **The Lost Boy Anecdote**: A child separated from his mother at a baseball game explains he couldn't hold her skirts because he was too short to reach them. This is a gentle joke about abbreviated hemlines—a 1920s fashion controversy where women's skirts became noticeably shorter, shocking more conservative observers. The child's literal inability to grasp the shortened garments represents the cultural gap between traditional dress and modern fashion. Both items satirize social disruption: military discipline and changing women's fashion norms.
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6 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang or thought he saw, in Evans a gentleman after his own heart—a steady, yea, even puritanical, officer. One early morning, Evans returned from a pass to Altoona, Pa., and flopped his weary way to the mess hall. Collapsing in a seat, he played with his fork and tried to look sober for a few minutes, and then giving it up he concentrated on grub—or rather on waiters. Near the mantelpiece in the mess stood what appeared to Evans to be the waiter on duty, and he addressed this person—the only other person in the mess—rather gruffly, I’m afraid. “Heah—hic—orderly!” he exploded. “D’yuh think I’m—hic—sitting here—hic—merely to provide you—hic—with a spectacle? I want some food . . .” “I’m afraid, lieutenant,” came the acid reply, “that you are providing me with a spectacle.” “Good Gawsch!” spluttered Evans. “I thought you were an orderly. I beg pardon, major; I didn’t shee you were the—hic—colonel.” * * * SPEAKING of abbreviated dress brings to mind a recent occurrence in the St. Paul ball park, whence I had flivvered to watch Minneapolis lose to the Saints. Coming out, after the game, I bumped into a small boy who had become lost in the crowd. Upon inquiring why he was crying, he howled: “I lost my mama.” “Why didn’t you hold to her skirts?” I asked. “I tried to,” wept the kid, “but I couldn’t reach them.”