There comes a time each summer when the heat becomes so oppressive and the humidity so thick that one can barely move out of one’s chair to turn up the fan or air conditioner. At times like these there is one simple solution, a cold shower or a jump in the pool. But there was a time many moons (or suns) ago when neither was an option. Back before central air, electric fans, indoor plumbing and private pools became common household amenities, most sweaty sufferers had to content themselves with a trip to “the old swimmin’ hole.” Whether a creek (always pronounced “crick”), a pond or a rocky gorge, the old swimming hole (painted by Henry Scott Tuke above) was a universal playground for rich and poor, old and young, male and female, and the clothed or unclothed. It became part of the fabric of our lives, as American as apple pie or Huckleberry Finn.

We didn’t have a swimming hole where I lived on Long Island while growing up. There was a town pool that always smelled of chlorine and coconut oil. But we’ve got one just up the road from me now at Catskill Creek that I’ve been to, and it is stunningly beautiful. Just the other day some friends of mine from Athens: Tony, Sarah Gray, Ryan and Dan went for a rousing swim amid the rocks and water-drenched logs. Some of us cannon-balled off the ledge into the murky depths below. Others tiptoed over stones balancing our iPods in one hand and beer cans in the other. I stood silently on a dam sipping my Diet Coke. It felt like old times — times so old that I’m not sure they didn’t happen a hundred years ago.

Recently I’ve read that the Swimming Hole is in danger of disappearing for good. Property owners have put up signs forbidding trespassers from accessing their lands. Insurance costs have skyrocketed making liability too dangerous a proposition. That won’t stop people from slipping past the signs and escaping the watchful eye of state troopers and local sheriffs. If one can’t strip off one’s clothes and dive into a crystal clear lake anymore, just because someone is afraid you’ll sue them if you slip and fall and break your neck, what’s the point of living in the country anyway? We might as well move to law school and hang in the stacks reading torts.

The Old Swimming Hole is part of our national consciousness, our mythology, our folklore. In the Victorian era, the swimming hole took on added significance as a kind of throwback to more innocent times before the Industrial Age changed the American landscape from an agrarian economy and millions flocked to the city to escape the family farm and find work. Progress and modernity were all. Roads were built; bridges spanned the old creeks. Communities sprung up where once only spring waters gurgled. The plash of a stone being thrown across the pond was replaced with the roar of a motorboat. Where once gangs of like-minded youths gathered to pass the time (and there was so much time back then to be savored), today kids hang out at their family’s backyard pool, during commercial breaks or between video games.

There were no swimming holes in the cities, other than the rivers where wharf rats braved the polluted waters. That’s why the public bathhouses were built, as a means of cleaning and refreshing the masses. But they lacked the playful charm of the great outdoors. So “Ye Ole Swimmin’ Hole” became a symbol of what had been lost, even though there were still plenty of swimming holes around. In fact, nearly every town in the country sent out photographers to take pictures of their local swimming holes. One could literally collect thousands of different ones today if one were so inclined. I began to collect some of these items a few years back when I stumbled across one at an antique store. It reminded me of my early summer days at Camp Becket in the Berkshires where my cabin buddies and I would slip off to one of the rocky slopes along the lake, strip down to our birthday suits and climb a weathered old piece of rope that flung us out into the crisp rain-fed waters of Rudd Pond.

Over the years, I’ve collected dozens of Swimming Hole images on postcards, stereoscopes, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, magazine covers, printing blocks, matchbooks, ashtrays, glassware, handkerchiefs, medallions and old photographs. There was even a film in the 40s called The Old Swimmin’ Hole, starring Jackie Moran. Its lobby cards and posters turn up occasionally on ebay.

What these bits of time-worn ephemera represent to me is a mirror into our past, a kaleidoscope of more innocent times and carefree days. Most of these mementos feature children, skipping across the edge of a creek, throwing themselves into the water. More often than not, the subjects are nude or “nekkid” as we used to say. Some who have glanced momentarily at my collection have raised their eyebrows with suspicion. Aren’t these images somehow perverse? Creepy? Sick? That to me is the saddest comment on the times we live in today. For when these postcards and trinkets were published no one thought there was anything even remotely inappropriate about the subject matter. No one questioned the motives of the person who might keep the image as a souvenir.

Magazines as mainstream as Life, Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post, Liberty and Popular Photography often plastered their covers with images of young kids diving au naturel into swimming holes. Famed artist Leyendecker did many swimming hole covers for the Post. Norman Rockwell, who more than any other artist represents the heart and soul of American wholesomeness, was commissioned to do a dozen or so swimming hole-themed magazine covers. Some of his most cherished images depict nimble youths dashing into streams, creeks and lakes without fear of censure or opprobrium.

Even the Boys Scouts, that rigid symbol of good Christian virtues and cleanliness, thought nothing odd in publishing images of skinny-dippng boys on their fraternal journals and inside their magazines. No, there is nothing at all untoward or unsettling about swimming hole memorabilia. It represents everything that is pure and simple and healthy about the American experience. Anyone who thinks otherwise should have his head examined and be thrown into the nearest swimming hole as soon as possible.

If anything, the old Swimming Hole memorabilia represented a nostalgia for less sexualized times. The innocence of childhood before the advent of beauty pageants for pre-teens and makeup for toddlers. The Swimming Hole was a decidedly masculine arena — and no wonder, since women were less prone to stripping off their clothes and diving into pools. They were tied to their hearth and home. For a girl to spend her time at a swimming hole, she had to be a tomboy as this comic trade card from days gone by indicates.

What is remarkable in looking back over the vast variety of Swimming Hole ephemera is how much humor there was in it. Rockwell was best at capturing the unbridled glee of youth shirking its menial duties while grasping an hour of free time at the old “hole.” Other cards and advertisements focused on the good clean fun of bathing regularly (at a time when most people only took a bath on Saturday nights). Ads for Ivory Soap, Crisco, Cream of Wheat and motor oils emphasized the hygienic benefits of swimming regularly. In later years, soda companies like 7UP underscored the sheer exuberance of the experience.

In times of war, the Swimming Hole came to symbolize the comfort of home, and seemed to represent the very ideals the soldiers overseas were fighting for. Cannon Towels did a series of several ads in the 40s showing naked soldiers recreating their favorite swimming holes in far-off lands in India, Africa and the Far East. The Swimming Hole served as a touchstone of sorts of male bonding and camaraderie.

No one captured the essence of the Swimming Hole as well as that great American artist Thomas Eakins. His magnificent painting “The Swimming Hole” is on view at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. It has been reproduced on postcards, calendars, placemats, even t-shirts. It is a true American icon. But Eakins was fired from his teaching post after having painted it. It wasn’t so much the subject matter that got him into hot water, but the fact that he brought one of the models to pose nude for his art class. It would appear that it is okay to envision the beauty of the male form in classical art but another thing entirely to dangle it in front of our noses.

So my friends, it is off to the Swimming Hole I go. I’m taking a break from the heat, and a break from this blog for a while. It’s summertime and as the song goes: “the living is easy…”

Here are a few parting words from James Whitcomb Riley, the author of the famous poem “Ye Ole Swimming Hole.”

Oh! the old swimmin’-hole! When I last saw the place,
The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face;
The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot
Whare the old divin’-log lays sunk and fergot.
And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be –
But never again will theyr shade shelter me!
And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul,
And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin’-hole.

Even when he wrote this touching bit of colloquial verse, he knew the swimming hole was fading fast. For most of us now, it is just a wisp of a memory, a souvenir of times past, but a world of comforting recollections well worth collecting.