Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, April 1923 · page 44 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #44 — page 44: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a humor magazine) contains two poems rather than cartoons. **Top poem** ("By Edwin H. Black"): Describes the aftermath of the Klondike Gold Rush (1890s). It depicts abandoned mining camps and a despondent Indigenous woman ("pickaninnie"—period terminology, now offensive) caring for a child by Crooked River/Kobuk River in Alaska, with the Inuit phrase translating to "all the white man's food is gone." The satire: prospectors left the region poor and depleted. **"Me and My Pup"** (Dana Sleeth): A comedic poem about an exasperating mixed-breed dog with dubious ancestry (pit bull, Airedale, Scotch terrier, "hootch hound"). The speaker alternates between cursing the dog's destructive behavior and admitting affection—killing a valuable rooster, constant barking and howling—yet finds him endearing. The humor lies in the narrator's conflicted exasperation: wanting to kill the pest while loving the beast.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
44 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang The miners left the country, where they hadn't found a cent. Empty cabins—rude reminders of the days of ninety-nine, Stand all along the water midst the stumps of spruce and pine. On the banks of Crooked River, sits a maiden all forlorn; "Kabloona kow kow peluk" (all the white man's grub is gone). A blue-eyed pickaninnie now she holds upon her knee; As the waters of the Kobuk ripple onward toward the sea. —By Edwin H. Black. * * * Me and My Pup By Dana Sleeth My pup— Damn him! Every time a sparrow twitters— He barks. Every time the moon beams— He howls. No pride of ancestry does he know. His mother was an Airdale No better than she should have been. His dad was a pit bull— And a traveling man. He shows pit bull, And Scotch terrier, And the hootch hound strain as well. Just now he went and killed a fifty dollar rooster. If it wasn't for his big brown eyes, And his perky, twitching ears, And his confiding grin, And the three wrinkles on his dome. I'd butcher the brute And have peace. My pup— God love him! Such a tiny bit of dog morsel. But he's gotta lot of fine blood in him. He has the fire of the terrier, The nose of the hound,