Let’s go to the beach and get naked❣️

I have a 75 year history with ocean beaches.

First, it was where I learned to use my legs after being paralyzed by polio. My parents had been fortunate enough to inherit some property on the East End of Long Island, in New York State. The property was hardly grand. We had the free use of a one room garage, complete with an oil drain in the middle of a concrete floor. In 1947, Mom’s dad wrangled the permanent loan of a cousin’s outhouse, transported on a Sunday morning when our neighbors were on their way to church. Bad timing. They were scandalized for decades afterward. We didn’t care. Mom joked about it every time the neighbors mentioned it. At first, we had no running water, but my grandfather pounded a point six feet deep in the sandy soil and installed a hand pump which served us for a good 20 years. My other grandmother, the paternal one, had used the garage as a residence while mourning the death of her husband in 1921. She had her brothers build top to bottom screens for entire front of the garage. This provided cost free air conditioning for the entire summer. Where the garage doors went during the summer, I don’t remember. But installing the screens at the end of June and taking them down again right before Labor Day was a hated chore, but necessary. We had a real ice box, with a huge block of ice being delivered every week. Need I mention that we didn’t have electricity? The icebox kept milk semi cool-never cold. If Mom wanted ice for her gin and tonic, an ice pick served to chip off a chunk or two.

Mom and my sister slept on day beds in the garage. My brother and I slept on war surplus Army cots in a huge tent out back of the garage. We had sleeping bags, again Army surplus, but we rarely used them. Air mattresses provided some relief cushioning.

We were in bed by nightfall, and up early enough to be fed breakfast and at the beach by 8 AM. Lunch was egg salad sandwiches, sometimes laced with onion or olives. We were allowed ten cents for an ice cream sandwich from the beach concession stand. Mom imposed three rigid rules. First, no going in the water for an hour after lunch. Second, always tell Mom where we were going next. Third, if she told us to get out of the water, or to move left or right of her, we were to obey her instantly, no discussion or questions allowed. That kept us all alive, long enough to survive to adulthood. In addition to teaching us to swim, Mom taught us how to get out of a sea puss, now called by most a rip tide. We were taught not to fight the current, but to swim diagonally across the tidal currents that ran perpendicular to the beach until we were out of the puss. Others, who did not have the benefit of learning from my mom, often died despite the best efforts of our life guards. A body laying flat on the beach was a permanent reminder to follow the rules.

We were as much home in the water as we were in our own beds. My adult cousin taught me to sail the catboat he had built for his kids. The salt water of the Atlantic ocean provided buoyancy for legs which had become somewhat withered by immobilization in a hospital bed. The surf provided endless rides body surfing. Before surfboards, a very rigid mat supplied by daily rental from the lifeguard concession allowed us to take the larger waves. The surf at low tide was created by a 100 foot long shelf of bottom sand, unique to our beach for tens of miles on either side. Tidal pools and ankle deep waters provided play spaces for toddlers and pre-teens.

As an adult, it was an exquisite pleasure to recover my childhood in the tidal pools of Fire Island’s Light House Beach before it got closed to nude bathing.

Peder Severin Krøyer (Danish, 1851 - 1909 En Flok Drenge ude i det Solglitrende Vand (A Bunch of Boys out in the Sunlit Water), 1892

Long Island, New York beaches in the 1950’s did not permit two piece bathing suits on women, let alone full nudity for boys or anyone else. The hand-me-down navy blue wool bathing suit with its white belt was just awful. It itched, never dried after use and was probably the most uncomfortable garment I have ever worn. My mother, who taught us all to swim, was a free spirit who would have encouraged us to go skinny had it been allowed. Not all was lost, however, as my cousins and I soon discovered skinny dipping on our own, along with roaming free naked in the oak and pine forests.