Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, March 1924 · page 5 of 71
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #57 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous column by John Held Jr. (a famous cartoonist of the 1920s) describing a Valentine's Day gift. The author claims to have purchased animals from Minneapolis's Minnehaha Park menagerie, including a lonely female black bear at his Pequot, Minnesota lodge resort. The joke centers on giving the bear a male bear as a romantic Valentine's "gift"—treating the animal matchmaking as a romantic gesture. The opening cartoon shows water dripping from a faucet and a woman gesturing—apparently illustrating the column's title and tone. The humor relies on the absurdity of applying human romantic sentiments to animal companionship, and the exaggerated rural persona ("old hayseed") narrating mundane farm life with grandiose language. This was typical Whiz Bang style—irreverent, whimsical satire aimed at middle-class American readers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
DRIPPINGS FROM THE FAWCETT john held Jr. Whiz Bang Farm, February 1, 1924. KNOWING that it is not well for man to be alone, I have gathered together a number of animals for my Breezy Point Lodge summer resort at Pequot, Minn. Most of them have come in unplatonic pairs like the pesky passengers aboard Noah's Ark. But the lady black bear has been disconsolate. She has had no little playmate and has been as lonesome as an Eskimo in a Turkish bath. So as this merry month of St. Valentine rolled around, my wife and I decided to present her with a valentine—another black bear. The Minneapolis park board wanted to abandon its menagerie at famous Minnehaha Park and this old hayseed bought up the animals. Among the first of the lot to be rounded up and shipped was that fur-lined valentine. I sent him off with appropriate sentiments to Pequot. 3