Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1921 · page 8 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #23 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This appears to be a humorous narrative (not a cartoon) from an early 20th-century satirical magazine. The story follows a narrator and his hired farmhand "Gus" from Minnesota on a trip to Atlantic City. The humor relies on Gus's rural naïveté contrasted with urban sophistication. Key jokes include: Gus ignoring a "Gentlemen" restroom sign and entering anyway; his dismissive response to a telegram warning about hotel availability ("If the Schlitz Hotel is full it has nothing on me"—a crude pun about his digestive system); and his reluctance to bathe, claiming "it wasn't the right time of the month." The satire targets unsophisticated rural Americans encountering modern city life, playing on period stereotypes of farmers as crude, hygiene-averse, and socially oblivious. The final warning about pickpockets suggests Gus remains a target for exploitation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
6 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang were Enright. Gus promptly formed the ad- vance guard on the Great White Way, or what- ever you call it, and soon we were both in right. After an eye opener or two, my hired man asked the genial barkeep for the location of the wash-room. He was shown an ante-room which bore the sign: “Gentlemen.” He walked right in anyway. Nothing in New York seemed to deter this faithful, simple Minnesota farm- hand. That night we received a telegram from Robbinsdale cautioning us to make reservations in the Schlitz Hotel at Atlantic City, as that institution might be full on account of the con- vention. Gus read the message to me, threw it in the waste basket as he nonchalantly re- marked: “If the Schlitz Hotel is full it has nothing on me.” The next day it was Atlantic City or bust. We arrived in rather good shape and were assigned a pleasant room overlooking the At- lantic and the famous boardwalk. I induced Gus to take a bath, although he insisted he didn’t need one and that anyway it wasn’t the right time of the month. A little bribe, how- ever, brought him around to his senses and after his plunge, I handed him a ten dollar bill to go about and enjoy himself. Before leaving the room he was strictly cautioned to beware of pickpockets.