Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1921 · page 7 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #23 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a narrative piece from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang*, a humor magazine. The text describes the editor's trip to New York City, bringing along Gus, a farm worker from the magazine's rural operations. The satire centers on **Prohibition-era America** (the 1920s): the mention of "gin mills" (illegal bars), "motley moonshine," and being told "we could get no liquor in New York" reflects the absurdity of Prohibition enforcement. The humor lies in Gus's culture clash—a rural farmhand refusing to change from overalls and red necktie in a fancy Manhattan hotel, contrasting rural simplicity with urban sophistication. The Schlitz Hotel reference appears nostalgic for pre-Prohibition beer culture. This is comedic Americana about modernization's discomfort and Prohibition's hypocrisy.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 5 We managed to last it out for one day in the North pine woods and early next morning hopped off for Minneapolis, with its fond mem-ories of many mills and motley moonshine. Later in the day, my brother, Harvey, who now conducts the business end of the little old Whiz Bang, located Gus and I in a gin mill. He handed me a nice letter of invitation to attend a convention of the Independent Magazine Dis-tributors at the Schlitz Hotel at Atlantic City. While the convention notice sounded mighty good, the name of the hotel suggested a hanker-ing for the good old days. Gus was heart-broken to think that I would leave him behind and as he had performed valiant service as caretaker of Pedro, our pedi-greed bull, and the cows and chickens during many years as Whiz Bang farm hand, I grant-ed his plea to accompany me. We landed safe, sound and, as usual, sick in the McAlpin in New York City. It was Gus' longest train ride and incidentally his first visit to the big village. At the outset he re-fused to remove his overalls, rubber collar and red necktie, which was quite embarrassing to me. We had a swell room on the tenth flight, with carpets on the floor and brass buttoned fellows to wait on us. We were informed we could get no liquor in New York unless we