Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, February 1922 · page 23 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #30 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a 1920s humor magazine) consists of a "Dear Captain" advice column with humorous Q&A exchanges and a poem celebrating the magazine's namesake farm. The jokes rely on wordplay and double meanings: "Duke's Mixture" puns on a cigarette brand; the Brooklyn Bridge joke mocks its famous complexity; "pasture" plays on "future"; and the drydock joke conflates a dry-dock (ship repair facility) with a doctor refusing prescriptions. The poem advertises the Whiz Bang farm near Robbinsdale, Minnesota with folksy rural imagery. The final joke about South St. Paul residents being so "tough" they use heavy sewer covers as game pieces reflects period American humor about regional toughness and working-class culture. The satire is gentle and domestic rather than political—typical of magazine humor targeting mainstream readers with puns, rural nostalgia, and gentle mockery of contemporary life and slang.
📄 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 21 Dear Capt. Billy—If my father was a duke and my mother was a duchess, what would that make me?—Watts D. Yoos. Why, I guess you would be Duke's Mixture. * * * Dear Captain—Tell me something interest-ing about auction bridge.—Adeline Moore. All we know about is Brooklyn Bridge, and that is just one long suspense. * * * Dear Capn.—What did my beau mean when he told me he would meet me in the future?—Sarah Desert. Probably he meant in the pasture. * * * Dear Capt. Billy—What is a drydock?—Torchy. A physician who won't give us prescriptions. * * * The Farm That Bull Built Oh! over the hill to Robbinsdale, For a slap on the back and a hearty hail. Where the cows do tricks in the new mown hay, And the Bull is thrown in a very quaint way. Where Gus is tired from morn till night, And the old silo is always tight. Where the chickens sing and the roosters crow. And the corn does a hoe-down row on row. So up the road to the Whiz Bang farm Where the onions grow but do no harm. It's a merry crowd that slings the hoe On Billy's farm. Come gang let's go. * * * They tell me people are so tough in South St. Paul they play Tiddly-Winks with the sewer covers. Zatright?