Grandpa Dick Was a Nudist

My grandpa Dick died of a heart attack when he was only 56 years old. He’d gone to the hospital complaining of chest pain but was told it was indigestion and sent home. Since we only ended up overlapping on earth for about eight years, I hardly knew him.

My most vivid recollection is that he was a nudist. We took a motorhome trip all the way from California to Grandpa Dick’s place in Florida for a visit when I was about seven. He lived at a so-called “nudist colony” in a doublewide on the shores of a small lake outside of Tampa.

I remember my mom demanding my dad call Grandpa Dick before our trip to confirm he would remain clothed during our visit. The negotiation was apparently successful, though Grandpa Dick stubbornly sauntered about shirtless in short shorts or in a terry cloth robe for most of our stay.

I don’t have a lot of memories of that trip, but as you’d expect it was strange to see people walking around nude. The naked residents were less attractive than I’d imagined—most would have looked better wearing clothes I thought. And walking past a nude doubles tennis match at the colony’s courts, with assorted appendages swinging freely, I remember that instead of looking liberating it just looked dangerous. I recall there was one nude old man who would fearlessly swim the length of the alligator-infested lake each day.

We’d arrived just before the holidays so Grandpa Dick invited us to the colony’s annual Thanksgiving feast. Although some of the kids attending wore clothes, the adults mostly arrived au naturel. I’ll never forget the tan, overweight woman who walked the dinner platter out—it was difficult to tell where her breasts ended and the turkey’s began.

Grandpa Dick was nice to me. He took us out on his speedboat, helped me learn to shoot my new BB gun, and he drove us into Tarpon Springs one day to see the sponge divers—and then out for a fancy seafood dinner.

He died unexpectedly a few months after our visit. This necessitated a second trip across country—this time with my aunt’s family joining us—to take care of his affairs and to settle the estate, so to speak.

I discovered then that Grandpa Dick had been mostly estranged from his children. My aunt, the oldest of his kids, hadn’t seen him in years. She’d apparently witnessed plenty of drunken rants and philandering when she was young, so she got out of the house as soon as possible via a marriage of convenience. My uncle Richard fled to the Peace Corps, and my dad, the youngest, escaped through music and maybe a few drugs.

I knew my dad’s childhood was hard just by viewing the family photos. In most of them he’s holding a shovel or a pick or leaning on a rake—forcing a smile with sweat matting his blond hair. But while Grandpa Dick made living at home hard physically, it was the drinking and womanizing that took the most significant toll.

Decades after Grandpa Dick died, my grandmother gave me a little silver box of his personal mementos, thinking I might like to keep them in the family. There was an old lighter, a ring, a few military pins, and a bracelet engraved with the name of each port his aircraft carrier had stopped at during WWII. She also gave me a photo of him—it’s from his navy ship. He was an airplane mechanic, and in the image he’s among a big group of sailors, but he’s dead center—smiling confidently, sitting with his legs straddling the Corsair’s propeller.

I thought I should share some of these inherited trinkets with my cousins, but when I offered they declined immediately, apparently having no interest in anything related to the man who’d so mistreated their mom and grandmother. I understood, but I’ve always felt a degree of sympathy for Grandpa Dick. Dying so young he never had a chance for a reckoning or late-in-life wake-up. Perhaps if he’d lived another 20 years he’d have managed to patch things up some.

I sense that, despite everything, my dad has mixed emotions too. He wrote a song called Still Ready about when, as a little kid, he’d have to drive his drunken father home from the bars. Some of the lyrics go like this:

When I was a boy my pop would stop off at the bar

Grab a few drinks while I waited in the car

Wasn’t thinking about wrong, thinking about right

Just doing my homework by a red neon light

Trying to stay awake in the shadows out of sight

And be ready, to drive my papa home tonight

But later in that same song he writes:

My papa lived a lot, he didn’t live long

I gave a speech and I sang his favorite song

But if he ever calls me in the middle of the night

I’m ready, still ready, to drive papa home.

That song always stuck with me. It conveys a lot of complicated feelings—grief, loyalty, and maybe even forgiveness—not just for who Grandpa Dick was, but for who he might have become if he’d had more time.

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P.S. I Googled the nudist colony and it’s still there. The website calls it a “resort” now and says they are “eager to welcome new visitors.” They claim to practice “traditional nudist values,” including “family-oriented nudism.” The site offers a Beginners Guide to Taking it Off with tips like “Try not to stare,” and “Always bring a towel to sit on.” Oh and there’s a restaurant at the resort now too—it’s called Cheeks.