Balmy Southern California has long been a natural habitat for nudists. But now the new permissiveness has caught up with this once-daring tribe. After visiting a former citadel of the cult near Los Angeles, TIME Correspondent Timothy Tyler reports:
Mel Hocker, one of the alltime great American nudists, is still out there in the nude. But he is not smiling and carefree, the way you would imagine a nudist to be. At 60, Mel sits alone in his little office, a mass of naked wrinkles, glum, dispirited, forlorn. Forlorn because just outside Mel's screen door, his own twelve-acre nudist club—the Oakdale Guest Ranch—is going silently to seed in the dry heat of the San Bernardino Mountains. In fact, the club's membership in two years has plummeted from 300 to 60 couples, and it continues to plummet as the elderly members die off. Another nudist camp near by recently closed up for good.
"It's the sexual revolution that's killing us," moans Mel, who has been nude nonstop now for 18 years. "The pornographic movies, the topless-bottomless bars, the dirty magazines—they're making nudism in America passé." To show what he means, Mel slips into shower clogs and takes us on a tour of his camp, mercifully letting us keep our pants on. The layout of the place hints of its past grandeur: 16 rustic cabins idling on a hillside, and down on the flat, dozens of vacant trailer slips where you can almost envision happy, laughing naked people swarming around gaily decorated mobile homes. But now, Mel says, the remaining members are mostly middle-aged and elderly couples who come out only on the warm weekends. The grandiose pool is empty, tennis and volleyball courts are unused, nets hanging limp in the sun.
The only sounds of life come from a screened hut with a sign on it that says CORNER NUDE STAND. Inside, a pretty young woman is dancing nude to a jukebox; the other patrons, mostly older males, sit drinking beer, droning apathetically and ignoring the woman. A sign on the wall says NUDI BURGERS. MORE MEAT LESS DRESSING. Hocker sits down, sips a Coke and brightens somewhat. "I pioneered in nudism, you know" he shouts over the music. "We were the first nudist place to serve beer, and we were first with nude dancing. This place has attracted your professional people, right down to the honorable janitor who pushes the broom."