The Nudist Colony Is Still Alive

     

Tucson Weather Today


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Naked City was mentioned at one of my favorite blogs, Rensselaer Adventures. Naked City was a small and semi-notorious Nudist Resort in Roselawn, Indiana, a speck on the map near my original hometown of Rensselaer, Indiana. The tavern at the entrance, open to nudists and outsiders alike, was a popular stopover in the middle 1900s for truckers running North and South on U.S. Highway 41 (known in the area as Bloody 41) and then in later years, from the newly built Interstate 65.

Dick Drost was the owner of Naked City resort and promoter of the beauty contest known as Miss Nude U.S.A. He, being wheelchair bound and in extremely bad health, and was a frequent patient at Jasper County Hospital, where my mom was a Nurse's Aide. She told many tales of Drost and his accompanying large staff of employees, his entourage -- such as how he would always order enough  pizzas to feed all the workers and the patients and their visitors on the floor.

Once when I was still a teenager, I was taken up in a small plane by my friend Jay, who was a qualified pilot and we buzzed the Naked City landing strip at about ten feet above the ground, and then went, flying low over the beach of a large pond where two or three people were lying naked on towels. Quite a thrill for a young squirt like me.

I had a good friend (in later years) who often visited Naked City with his wife and sometimes his kids. They were enthusiastic sun-worshipers. I won't name them here because even though my friend has passed, his wife still lives in Rensselaer, and I believe his kids do too. I wouldn't want to embarrass any of them.

Here is a short blog entry (with comments included) regarding the dark side of Naked City

Evidently the Nudist area is still in existence.

A short piece on The Sun Aura Nudist Resort, as it is now called, can be read at Roadside America dot com.

LINK

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A Bit Of History

On April 13, 1970, disaster struck 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days before for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon but were forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive.

More . . .

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WORD FOR TODAY

entourage [ahn-tuh-rahj]
noun
A group of attendants or associates; a retinue.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS


Richard Bartlett "Ricky" Schroder, Jr.
(born April 13, 1970)

Rick Schroder is an American actor and film director. He debuted in the 1979 hit film The Champ, going on to become a child star on the sitcom Silver Spoons. He has continued acting as an adult, notably on the western Lonesome Dove and the television crime drama NYPD Blue.

Don Adams
(April 13, 1923 – September 25, 2005)

Don Adams was an American actor, comedian and director. In his five decades on television, he was best known as Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) in the television situation comedy Get Smart (1965–1970, 1995), which he also sometimes directed and wrote. Adams won three consecutive Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Smart (1967–1969). He provided the voices for the animated series Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (1963–1966) and Inspector Gadget (1983–1986) as their title characters. He voiced Sid Pickles in all episodes of Spike & Mike (1993–1999), and two follow up films, Spike & Mike Movie and Spike and Mike: Got Hostaged.

Robert Leroy Parker
Better known as Butch Cassidy
(April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908?)

Notorious American train robber, bank robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch Gang in the American Old West. After pursuing a career in crime for several years in the United States, the pressures of being pursued, notably by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, forced him to flee with an accomplice, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, known as the Sundance Kid, and Longabaugh's girlfriend, Etta Place. The trio fled first to Argentina and then to Bolivia, where Parker and Longabaugh were probably killed in a shootout in November 1908.

Thomas Jefferson 

(April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826)

Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third President of the United States (1801–1809).

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Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
--James Baldwin