Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, September 1921 · page 29 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #27 — page 29: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains satirical prose rather than a cartoon. The text mocks New Orleans dining culture through exaggerated, humorous descriptions. The author ridicules a cheap, run-down café, personifying worn tableware and furniture to suggest their histories of romantic encounters and crude conversations. References to "callow couples," "spooning," and "off-color stories" emphasize the dingy establishment's role as a venue for working-class romance and ribald humor. The satire targets both the restaurant's poor conditions (garlic stench, falling plaster, filthy tablecloths) and New Orleans's reputation for hedonistic excess—the "Lotus-eating town" obsessed with "earthly gastronomy" rather than intellectual pursuits. The tone is lighthearted mockery of lower-class leisure culture and the city's bohemian reputation, typical of *Whiz Bang's* irreverent, humorous approach to American social life.
📄 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 27 squirm, a swerve, a swirl ,a slide and a slip. It was enough to make Terpsichore sick. The players made hard work of it and the dancers should have received good wages for such strenuous labor, for it was simply a dance "haul." In New Orleans, earthly gastronomy and not heavenly astronomy is the science most studied in its "courses." Many are the toothsome taverns in this Lotus-eating town. I remember one time-eaten cafe where there was a di-"stink"-tive garlic atmosphere, and where the soup was seasoned by falling plaster. Over the tattered table-cloth, evidently changed for every hundredth guest, French drip coffee had dripped. Antique china and silver service had served their day and long since should have decorated the windows of a curio shop. It was old with cracks, nicks and dents. What jokes were cracked over them? What sweet stories had the ears of the sugar-bowl listened to? With what wide astonishment had the mouth of the pitcher gasped at off-color stories? What hands had caressed the neck of vinegar and oil bottle? What cutting remarks and thrusts the knives and forks suggested! What spooning of callow couples the spoons had witnessed! The table was superannuated, shaky on its pins, and subject to ague-fits, while the chairs had felt so many rounds of pleasure that they were nearly all in with broken backs, twisted feet and elliptical legs. The old lamps had looked