Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, April 1923 · page 8 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #44 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a 1920s-era humor magazine) contains three satirical pieces: 1. **Southern Liquor Prices**: Mocks Prohibition-era pricing disparities. Scotch costs $60/case in the South versus $120 in the North, explaining Southern "hospitality"—hosts can afford to serve guests more cheaply. 2. **KKK Joke**: A racist "humor" piece featuring a stereotyped Black character making a dark joke about receiving KKK mail. The punchline relies on the threat of lynching—"reading it on the train" means fleeing quickly. This reflects how the KKK was resurgent and violent during the 1920s. 3. **Editor's Personal Misadventure**: The editor complains his wife published his photograph in the December issue while he managed the magazine, causing him embarrassment. This is self-deprecating humor about domestic life. The page reflects 1920s attitudes: casual racism, Prohibition bootlegging as normalized humor, and gender-based domestic comedy.
📄 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 THERE is one partial explanation for the well-known Southern hospitality. With Scotch liqueurs selling in Charleston and Savannah at $60 a case, it costs only half as much to be hospitable in the South as it costs in our state where one must pay one hundred and twenty smackers for twelve suspiciously new labels. IN MY recent visit in the Sunny Southland, I asked an old Negro in Camden, S. C., what he'd do if he received a letter from the Ku Klux Klan. "Say, Boss, I'd read that letter on the train." I WOULD have wagered the niblick of a rhinoceros against the jaw bone of an ass that my red headed wife would get me into some sort of a jam, when I left her in charge of the Whiz Bang last fall while I went deer hunt-ing. Ever since she slipped my tintype into the December issue, Ye Editor has felt like a June bride in hot water most of the time. Below is a fair sample of the fun poked at this helpless farmer. The envelope was posted at Danville, Va.