Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1922 · page 12 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #36 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a humor magazine) contains a humorous anecdote about "Ikey," a Jewish farm-hand identified by ethnic stereotype ("Hebrew hay handler"). The joke involves: **The Setup:** Ikey is tricked into betting $10 on his game cock against neighbor Sol Markee's eagle. The eagle wins decisively, damaging Ikey's rooster and costing him money. **The Punchline:** Later, at a bridge game, when Ikey plays poorly (fails), his bridge partner asks why. Ikey responds defensively: "Don't drag in business"—meaning, don't blame his bad card play on his recent financial loss. **The Satire:** The humor relies on stereotyping (the "Jewish" character as shrewd but unlucky, the con-artist neighbor), rural Americana (Robbinsdale, game cocks), and wordplay. The magazine's appeal to 1920s American readers involved ethnic humor now considered offensive, though the joke's structure—a man embarrassed about money troubles—remains recognizable.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
10 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang also, or else the Robbinsdale mosquitoes have special relish for kosher meat. Anyway, his nose folds up now like a patent golf bag carrier and his eyes look like wormholes in a snow drift. He blames his Scotch plaid expression partially on the mosquitoes and partly on Neighbor Sol Markee's 22-year-old son, Alf. Alfred came over disguised as an alms giver on a food train and hornswaggled Ikey into a $10 bet on his game cock against Neighbor Markee's pet eagle. According to Ikey's description of the fight by rounds, the first went to the eagle by the flick of a talon. In the second the eagle knocked Ikey's entry for a row of hand-painted chicken coops and after he had him down he bit one of the game cock's feet off. Ikey lost his $10 and his rooster is out a foot. That explains why my farm-hand is madder than a woodpecker on a marble tree and why his dis-position squeaks like a dry axel. * * * THE night after the game cock incident Tom Howard, of the Howard Lumber Company, Robbinsdale, dropped in for a round of bridge and Ikey was invited to make a fourth. Heart being led, he threw away a club. “Failing?” asked Tom Howard, his partner. “Don’t drag in business,” retorted my He-brew hay handler.