Taiwan 2025 - NE Coast, Hotel Sign / The Skinny Dippers

The hotel sign where we stayed for one night.

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At about age 13 a few friends and I took to skinny dipping. Yes, that all-American boyhood rite of passage immortalized by Rockwell's "No Swimming" painting. During the daylight hours we located a few remote creeks for the purpose, which was fun, but got tired of the long bike rides. Where to go next? We were already sneaking out at night, wandering the dark streets of Orange virtually every weekend. Why not go for something more handy? The whole town during those hours was at our disposal. Of course my friends Brent Holland and Doug McHugh were charter members of the skinny-dipping gang.

We started with the Linkwood Apartments on 14th St, two blocks from our house on Chapman. Stealthily we made our way to the pool after entering the complex in the dark of night. This was before cameras were everywhere, and in those days the crime rate was low in a small town like Orange anyway, so all we had to do was keep quiet. After leaving our clothes on the side we entered the water very slowly to avoid attracting attention from the neighbors, whose doors were only about fifteen feet away, then swam mostly under water. It was fun - been here, done this.

We upped the ante a little by next choosing the YMCA pool on West Park Avenue, which was ringed by an 8' wooden fence. This was a bit more dicey because it wasn't nested in a neighborhood like the Linkwood Apartments were, and there was more road traffic to avoid. But we managed, choosing to go there only once to avoid pushing our luck. A little challenging - been there, done that.

Next stop? The Holy Grail of our skinny dipping adventures - the Sunset Country Club! This was designated as the Holy Grail for several reasons: 1) it was the nicest pool in town; 2) it could have been guarded or monitored in some fashion, increasing the risk; and 3) there were substantial obstacles in getting there, including navigating through a stretch of woods and traversing a considerable distance in the open through the length of the course. Brent lived at 2309 John Baker Circle nearby, so we decided to use his house as a base. Also with us were a couple of skinny-dipping novices, brothers Stan and Clay. On the designated night, at 0100 hours, our team of four embarked on this perilous mission. And since the Country Club was such a swanky place, for the first time we brought towels.

The woods were no problem...we'd been exploring, galivanting, shooting BB guns, and camping in the place since we were younger kids. I had good night vision and Brent a good sense of direction, so we negotiated a pre-planned route until emerging at the edge of the club property. It was a moonlit night, thus easy to plot our way to the pool but risky because it would be so much easier to see us. Gathering courage, we began warily crossing the course grounds, heads on a swivel, keeping our eyes peeled for anything that moved. When possible we stayed close to the occasional oak along the way. Finally, we reached the pool undetected. It was surrounded by an eight-foot chain link fence. Knowing that time was of the essence, we scaled it as quickly and quietly as possible, staying clear of those twisty points on top. Then, as we'd done in other places, we left our clothes on the side while slipping in for a good swim. Dare we be so bold as to use the diving boards? Probably not, we concluded. After about ten minutes we decided that enough was enough, so donned our clothes and scaled the fence again to reverse course back to Brent's house.

Ah, but things were not so easy on the way back. Since we'd already done the deed, a little bit of cockiness accompanied our swagger and we became overconfident, talking almost normally as we crossed the grounds. More than three-quarters of our way back to the trailhead, however, someone noticed a movement traveling the perimeter of the property. A golf cart! It was the night watchman, driving slowly with a strong search light, illuminating the length of the course as it swept across. So what to do now? Only thing was to hide, because we would be exposed by that light in no time. Very fortunately, a relatively large water oak was nearby so the four of us lined up behind its trunk, one behind the other to minimize our profile. As the cart made its way across the property, we repositioned ourselves to stay lined up, keeping the trunk between us and the guard. To our dismay, as he passed closer we observed a shotgun resting across his lap. More than once we held our collective breath as the beam brightly lit the other side of our blessed tree...thankfully it was big enough and we were all skinny enough to stay out of the guard's crosshairs. We watched as the cart passed no more than a hundred feet away, then it turned toward the pool area we'd just abandoned. That was our cue to make a break for it and ran like crazy for the woods.

We became disoriented in our haste and temporarily lost the trail, but regained our bearings and made it back to Brent's. Never found out what it was that alerted the night watchman, but no matter...we were safe and sound with another story-telling feather in our caps.