Swimming Naked

A West Texas (and elsewhere) story of the 1950s (and later).

Henri Gadbois [Swimmers] 1960.

Swimming naked isn’t something I do often anymore.

Apologies to any who may now be cringing at the thought that I ever do it at all, and may now, and perhaps for evermore, have trouble expunging the image of such from a twitching mind’s eye. Rest assured that almost all the naked swimming I ever did was long ago and far away – and there are no photos – at least I don’t know of any. I’m twitching myself at just the chance there might be some.

I’m writing about it now because one of the paintings in our stairwell, a large one right at the top of the first landing, one which I pass many times a day, and have for many years, one that I sometimes even still take a moment once in a while to look at after all these years, is the image of some naked swimmers (above), painted in 1960 by Houston artist, Henri Gadbois (1930-2018).

I suspect that Henri might have been thinking back to the masters as he painted it, back to Picasso and Cézanne.

Picasso Les Adolescents 1906 L'Orangerie, Paris (l); Cézanne The Bather c.1885 Museum Of Modern Art, New York City (r).

The young men he painted, so Henri told me, were students attending the high school where he taught. Ah, 1960, what an innocent time. So long ago, so much has changed. Can you imagine a high school teacher now, painting such a picture of his high school students, and NOT winding up in jail!?

And they say those old days were such a prudish time, that we’re so much more enlightened now. Don’t you believe it. Why, even in this modern age, I’ve blurred out certain passages of the painting, hoping that I won’t wind up in jail myself as I use it to illustrate this piece!!

The painting has brought the piece to mind because the period of my own life when I did most of my naked swimming was not many years before Henri painted it – the 1950s. Back then, as a kid in Lubbock, Texas, I spent many hours of most days of several summers going to the Boys Club on Avenue K. It’s now a tin-shed flea market, so Google Street View tells me, but back then it was a venerable brick building, set in expansive grounds, with a baseball diamond, where I spent many hot, dusty afternoons way out in right field – that’s the field where they send the worst players, isn’t it, the ones always picked last (like me), because every boy got a chance to play at Boys Club, whether he wanted to or not (like me). And there was a basketball court, and maybe some weights in what passed for a “gym.”

Boys Club, Lubbock, Texas, 1950s.

There was also a swimming pool, the first indoor pool in Lubbock, and only the second of either kind, when it opened in 1950. Indoor, for use in all seasons, though I only ever went there in the summer months.

Indoor, also, because of the naked swimming, which is where Henri’s painting comes in. It’s not just that swimsuits were optional, they were banned! It was swimming naked for every boy there, ages 6 to 17, no exceptions – except for the coach, of course. For all the rest of us, Naked, Naked, Naked, every swim, every day. All the little fellas all hanging out, all the time – though if memory serves, not all the fellas were so little, especially as their sporters approached 17.

Can you imagine such a thing today!!??

Yes, I’m sure some of you can, though I’m talking about the concept, not the actual sugarplum fairies dancing in some of your heads. (Don’t worry, I won’t name names.) It takes my breath away, thinking how no one thought it was even an issue then, not even, it seems, the preachers who spent long summer Sundays tempting us with tales of sins some of us – the younger and more sensitive ones – couldn’t yet imagine – or even believe – but it was Preacher Man (always men then) telling us about them, so they must have been true!!!!

It takes my breath away too, remembering that I walked to the Boys Club on my own from early on, by age 8 or 10 – walked the dozen blocks from our house to the Club and back again – and no one thought a thing about it. Why would they? All the boys did. And besides, I walked alone back and forth to George R. Bean Elementary, only a few blocks closer than Boys Club, and had since first grade.

And when I got home, to an empty house, since my parents both worked, I didn’t even need a key: we never locked the kitchen door. If we had, how could the milk man get in to put our bottles in the refrigerator, or the laundry man to make his pickups and deliveries? We did lock the front door, but only because everyone did that, since it seemed reasonable that some door should be locked. There goes my breath away again, that no one ever came in and cleaned us out through all those years – except for the cleaning lady, that is, who came in without a key too, at whatever time the bus got her to our house, from “her part of town.” I suspect you know what that implies.

Ah, the 1950s. How long ago, how different!

But back to swimming – though not naked now. When I got older and bolder – bold enough to walk even further on my own – I gave up the naked swims at Boys Club for hot summer afternoons at the newer, posher, outdoor Clapp Pool, way out southwest of us, in Clapp Park. Yes, I know, unfortunate name - until you know that it was named for Mr. K.N. Clapp, “longtime Parks board member,” and wasn’t a clever euphemism for something I couldn’t imagine at age 12, when I started going there, and wouldn’t have believed even if Preacher Man had warned about it in a Sunday sermon, which he didn’t – wouldn’t believe till some years later, when …

But that’s another story, for another time, and, perhaps, a different audience.

Care to take a Clapp dip? 1950s.

No, there was no naked swimming at Clapp Pool, except occasionally at night, when some of the more rowdy older teens – high schoolers for sure, probably soon to be graduating seniors – climbed over the fence for moonlight madness. I might have said “rowdy and randy,” though that might be misconstrued as a memoirist’s attempt to brag; I cannot claim to have ever been that rowdy. So no naked Clapp swimming in my history, not even as a soon to be graduating senior.

My next opportunity for au naturel-ing came some years later, as I pursued my higher education in Austin. This was in 1980.

Oh, there had been a few disrobed dips in between: a summer afternoon on Fire Island in the mid-70s; visits to the Continental Baths, in New York (where Bette Midler got her start, though not naked, one assumes), Man’s Country, in Chicago, and Club Baths, in St. Louis and Key West and other “randy” cities: boys clubs of a different sort. But “Hippie Hollow,” on Lake Travis, with beautiful views from the rocky shore, and (occasionally) other views from the scrub-covered bluffs, marked the real return of naked swimming into my exercise regimen. Oh those lovely afternoons of sunning on the beach, and dipping in the lake, and (occasionally) strolling on the bluff - in the buff. Ah, 1980. How long ago, how different. And how much slimmer the naked swimmer!

I suppose I should try, here toward the end, adding some legitimizing heft to what is basically a cheesy look back at nakedness legitimized by swimming. Here goes:

Was I somehow warped by that early immersion in naked swimming? To paraphrase Dorothy Parker’s comment, when told of the death of President Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge: How can we tell? By the time one has reached my age, there have been so many things that could have done the warping, that picking out that one in particular may be more a function of current trauma trends than reality. So, who knows?

There. Done with legitimizing heft.

And out of compassion for your twitching mind’s eye, I will rush to add that, for practical purposes, my naked swimming ended more than 40 years ago, in Austin. Now all my swimming is in trunks. You might even find it comforting to take the image below away from reading this; it might go a little toward quelling the twitch. And if you should somehow happen upon any of those nonexistent photos of me from long ago – I DENY IT! (twitch, twitch).