Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1921 · page 11 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #23 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two humorous anecdotes rather than cartoons. The first is a mock-serious "In Memoriam" obituary for Pedro, a pedigreed bull who died of homesickness while his owner Gus visited Broadway. The joke plays on treating a farm animal's death with exaggerated solemnity, typical of *Whiz Bang's* irreverent humor. The second joke is a wry commentary on hypocrisy. After a minister preaches about Lot's wife looking back and turning to salt, the narrator's hired man Gus observes the minister himself sneaking away with Deacon Smith's wife—implying the minister is engaging in improper behavior. The punchline suggests both "turned into a dark side street" (hid themselves), inverting the biblical lesson about the consequences of looking back. Both pieces mock rural/small-town America's pretensions and moral contradictions through deadpan wit.
📄 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 9 IN MEMORIAM GUS and Maggie wish to express their heartfelt thanks for the kind sym-pathy and the beautiful flowers at-tending the recent bereavement of their be-loved Pedro, famed pedigreed bull, to whom we were very much attached and who died from shortness of breath, superinduced by a severe case of homesickness, due to the absence of his favored master, Gus, during Mr. Gus' recent trip to Broadway. It is our joy and comfort to let our many friends know that Pedro's place in our hearts.will be partly filled by his young son, Pedro, Jr. WE WENT to church last Sunday for a change and the minister preached a sermon about Lot's wife looking back and turning into a pillar of salt. We were tell-ing Gus, our hired man, about the sermon, and Gus says he was walking around Robbinsdale Monday evening and saw the minister strolling with Deacon Smith's wife, and when they looked back and saw Gus, both of them turned into a dark side street.