Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, December 1924 · page 15 of 71
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #67 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humor column titled "Farmyard Fun and Philosophy" featuring four brief, unrelated jokes typical of 1920s rural American satire. The first anecdote mocks a character named Aggie for thinking she's clever—she believes she "fooled" a cafeteria by eating without washing dishes, apparently not understanding that's standard practice. The second joke presents Deacon Miller as hypocritical: he claims to follow a principle of saying nothing unkind, then delivers a brutal insult about a woman's appearance and intelligence. The third is a child's joke based on wordplay—the mother says she's "twenty-four summers" old, and the child innocently asks about "falls" (implying "winters/falls"), which the father humorously suggests means she never ages because she avoids falling down. The final item is a joke title about Gus playing an unrefined bugle "sonata" about spitting in corners—crude humor typical of the era's lower-brow comedy magazines. The page exemplifies Whiz Bang's rustic, folksy humor aimed at rural readers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
[Farmyard Fun and Filosophy] AGGIE considers herself a heap smarter than Olaf, and she has reason to be as this story bears witness. Not long ago she patronized a cafeteria for the first time. “I fooled ’em, Captain Billy,” she said, “I went right in there, took the tray and the knife and fork, got the grub, carried it to a table, and then sneaked out without washing the dishes.” * * * Deacon Miller believes if he can’t say something pleasant about a person, he’d better remain silent. Here’s his few kind words concerning a neighbor woman: “She looks like the wrath of Jehovah, talks like static and if brains were dynamite, she couldn’t blow her nose.” * * * WHEN a Robbinsdale youngster asked her mother how old she was, the mother answered, “I’m twenty-four summers, anyway.” That night at dinner the little one said to her daddy, “Do you know that mother is twenty-four summers old?” “But how about the falls?” “Oh, mother is very careful—she never falls.” * * * GUS WILL NOW BLOW A BEAUTIFUL SONATA ON HIS BUGLE ENTITLED: “SPITTIN’ IN THE CORNER.” Whiz Bang Bill [13]