Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1922 · page 10 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #36 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from the satirical magazine contains three brief humorous items: 1. **Radio technology satire**: Mocks newfangled radio inventions (radio plowing, radio furnaces, self-cranking ouija boards) as absurd, while acknowledging the nuisance of amateur radio operators' midnight broadcasts. The reference to W.J. Bryan—a populist political figure—suggests criticism of old-fashioned rhetoric in a modern age. 2. **Women's fashion joke**: A quip about women wearing expensive stockings but only displaying the cheaper portion, playing on vanity and the cost of women's clothing during this era. 3. **Native American marriage anecdote**: A stereotype-laden story about an Ojibwe couple from Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota who marry for practical warmth-sharing rather than romance or property. The humor relies on dated racial caricatures and dialect ("Him got blanket"), presenting Indigenous people as simple or unsentimental. The page reflects 1920s-era humor: technophobic, focused on gender and class, and heavily reliant on ethnic stereotypes now considered offensive.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
8 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang is enough to make my farmyard domicile sparkle like an effervescent bottle of apple juice. What is prettier to look at than that? You don't have to drink it. Wherefore, I say, bring on the radio plow-ing; the radio-furnace and the self-cranking ouija boards even though it does mean mid-night recitals by amateur radio reserves, com-bined with national casket makers' statistics and interpolated remarks by W. J. Bryan on “The Office Socks the Man.” * * * AFTER a dame has paid eight bucks for a pair of stockings, you can't blame her for showing $7.50 worth of them. * * * AN INDIAN from the Leech Lake Reserva-tion near Breezy Point recently toted a winsome copper-colored maiden to the sky-pilot at Pequot to get married. The min-ister asked the bride-to-be if her “big chief” had any property. Her answer was: “Nothing.” “And you, are you any better off?” Again a negative reply. “Then what on earth do you want to get married for?” queried the reverend gentleman. “Him got blanket. Me got blanket. Too damn cold sleep one blanket.”