Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1921 · page 10 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #23 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a 1920s humor magazine) contains two humorous anecdotes with no visible cartoons. The first story humorously describes a trip's misfortunes: a man named Pedro dies, yet simultaneously a Hereford cow births a calf, which the narrator facetiously names "Pedro Junior" to continue the "Pedro Bullage" (a pun on "bulldog" or cattle lineage). The narrator then cheers up his depressed friend Gus by buying him a ring-tailed monkey at a Chicago pet store—presented as a consolation prize that apparently becomes Gus's obsession. The second item mocks Deacon Miller's son Pete, who purchased a "golden trombone" from a mail-order catalog and now entertains neighborhood children nightly. The closing line—about Pete's ability to "slide that golden trombone in and out to beat the band"—appears to be a crude sexual innuendo typical of the magazine's lowbrow humor style. Both pieces exemplify the magazine's folksy, rural-Minnesota-focused comedy and double-entendre humor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
8 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang "Pedro died at 6:00 o'clock—Does Gus want his body brought to Robbinsdale for burial?—A son was born to the Hereford cow one hour after Pedro passed—Have named him Pedro Junior after his father, which assures continua- tion of the Pedro Bullage." Pedro's death and my intermittent head- aches rather dampened our spirits and so we started back for Robbinsdale. Waiting in Chi- cago for our connections to Minnesota, and wishing to cheer up Gus and to ease the pain of Pedro's death I said to him, "Gus, you have done pretty good on the trip so I will get you something nice. What do you want?" We were just passing a bird store and and Gus said, "Get me a pet monkey." So I bought him a ring tail monk, which he now has at Breezy Point and with which he spends most of his time after his day's work. As this is written I have somewhat over- come the effects of tapering off, but the mem- ory of this last jamboree has made an ever- lasting record on Gus' snoose dampened mind. * * * DEACON MILLER'S son, Pete, has a new racket. It appears that he bought a gol- den trombone from some Chicago mail order house, and every night he entertains the boys and girls of the neighborhood with his melodies. Everybody likes to see the way Pete is coming to the front and when it comes to playing fast music, etc., Pete can slide that golden trombone in and out to beat the band.