UPI Nudesman Stripped for the Story: Ex-La Mesan’s First Full-Monty Telling

Some 40 years ago this month, United Press International sent its worldwide clients a 500-word first-person report from Harbison Canyon on the annual meeting of the American Sunbathing Association.

The news? The reporter went nude.

The reporter? Former La Mesan Ron “Hutch” Hutcherson.

The whole story was never told—until Sunday, when Hutcherson, 77, shared hilarious details via an email newsletter sent to former colleagues at the paper now called U-T San Diego.

“Disrobing brought a kind of peace,” he wrote, “but only at that time and place. I felt no need for an encore.”

UPI—a one-time rival to The Associated Press—essentially folded in the 1990s.  But its San Diego “early morning” correspondent went on to become a lawyer. Hutcherson is retired, living in Arizona and Baja California south of San Felipe.

A 21-year resident of La Mesa near Lake Murray (ending in 1989), Hutcherson gave Patch permission to repost his close encounter of the unclothed kind.

Full Text of Hutcherson’s Story:

Typical dampness and fog covered San Diego on a summer morning that I haven’t forgotten, maybe in early July and in 1972, give or take a year.

I started by making my usual stop at the police station on Market Street around 4 a.m. My routine as UPI’s early morning man was to shuffle through a basket of incident reports (they let reporters do that in those days), talk to dispatch officers, drink some of their coffee and then head for the UPI bureau in the lovely green 919 [Second Avenue] relic the U-T called home.

I then did a phone check of other law enforcement agencies and the Weather Bureau. At 6:30, I filed a bunch of radio briefs by Teletype for local broadcasters.

By 9 a.m. I was usually on my way the courthouse or the county building for more local news trivia. If something more interesting popped up, I opted for that.

On the day in question, Bureau Chief Ray Means strolled in about 8:30, just as the phone rang. When he hung up, he told me UPI’s New York assignment desk had called to say the American Sunbathing Association was holding its annual meeting near San Diego.

The on-high order was that somebody from the bureau had to cover it, and Ray said he wasn’t going. We had no one else there just then.

I was made to understand that the ASA tried to be to nude sunbathers what the AMA is to doctors. The local ASA affiliate, the Swallows Camp, was in a big hollow off Harbison Canyon Road over the mountain from El Cajon. Ray provided careful road instructions and made it clear that I was the man for the job.

New York insisted. It appeared that an ASA publicist had charmed a senior UPI editor into believing that officers of buffy groups from coast to coast planned serious debates on whether to scuttle two strictly enforced rules.

One prohibited nude body contact dancing—think foxtrot—and one banned nudist camp booze under many conditions. Any change would be hot news, I was told. OK.

Within the hour, I was driving my family boat—the type that has a steering wheel made sticky by young sons eating ice cream—into the wilds of Harbison Canyon. I wondered how I would handle this one.

Would stripping be the mandatory price of admission? What would people say?

Could I maintain any composure at all?

Doubts came in flurries as I drove for 45 minutes or so. As I headed north on Harbison Canyon Road, an old moss-green station wagon passed me. I saw two attractive women on the front seat, neither having a stitch of clothing that showed.

Raunchy imagination took over.

Then came the gate into the Swallows Camp, an overlapping high board fence affair that one could drive through in a serpentine pattern but could not see through. I followed the station wagon.

Just a few feet inside, an Amazonian voice bellowed, “Whoa, there. Where do you think you’re going?”

I stared at a woman built like two tree trunks, just as bare and sun-browned over every square centimeter. Fleeing, talking and arm-wrestling seemed out of the question.

My my jaw hit bottom as I studied Swallows security, and then a voice told the matron, “Hey, I know that guy. He’s OK.”

The voice belonged to a courtroom artist I had gotten to know on the job. I’ll call him Joe for the sake of his privacy, but I doubt that he cares.

Joe explained to Madame Intimidation that I was a bona fide news reporter, a decent sort, and probably a patsy for a small loan. (I confess to slight exaggeration.) Madame relented and directed me to park near the gate. I supposed I would see her again.

Joe, totally buff and brown, surveyed my sport coat, shirt and tie, heavy slacks and ankle-high boots over rib-knit socks and invited me to stow it all in a locker.

I said no and explained my mission.

“Ah,” he said, “there are a few officers meeting in the amphitheater. Want to go?”

We left the main square of high over-arching trees, lawns surrounded by cabins, swimming pools and more. I eyeballed hundreds of nudists lounging about, strolling and playing games in the shaded area. But we trekked over 200 yards of parched dirt path in glaring hot sun. Sweat flowed under my button-down shirt.

Our destination turned out to be a few rows of plank seats in a bowl-like semicircle.

Three naked gray-hairs were mumbling to each other at a table in the middle. No debate, no audience, nothing to write about. I asked Joe to inquire. Oh, that, maybe in three or four days, they said.

Now what?

Just then two tanned and comely young women approached. Each wore a cotton union suit with short legs and short sleeves. They delighted in explaining to Joe that County Health insisted they be clad in order to serve food at a buffet lunch.

With considerable animation, they demonstrated how the buttons worked, baring all of bust in the unbuttoned state, and how the seat panels worked, again baring all in the gotta-go state.

The temperature had to be at least 104, and I still had my jacket and tie on. Joe suggested a return to the shaded quadrangle.

Observing that my jacket was wetter than most mops, Joe guided me to the corner of a competition-sized swimming pool and invited me to take a dip. No one was close by.

He urged that I undress behind him in some kind of fake privacy, slip in quickly to cool off, jump out and slide right back into my clothes. He would set up a couple of interviews while I chilled, he said.

I have learned over time that the person most readily deceived is oneself. That day I was no exception; I was in the pool quickly. I did lazy laps across the unpopulated end of the pool, then hooked my arm over the coping and stared at the springboard.

A young lady with fetching and jiggling endowments was using the board as a trampoline. Up, down, up, down.

And then I felt it—a gentle caress along my thigh. I looked up, I looked away, it persisted, and I looked down. A narrow rubber pump hose was swishing by my leg, probably part of the pool’s filtration system. Time to grow up. And get out. And get to work.

Joe had disappeared. So had my clothing. I stood there stupidly. A moment later, he appeared and handed me my reporter’s notepad and pen.

He explained he had put the clothes in a locker for safety and had set up a fantastic interview with Josanne, who, based on the thickening of his voice, had to be exceptional.

Josanne surpassed my wildest imaginings and, to my mind, human decency. She had conspired with Joe. He led me around the corner of the pool to a shaded and very populated spot.

“Meet Josanne,” he grinned.

Josanne, or someone using the name as an alias, reposed on a nylon and aluminum chaise lounge, book in hand. She, like most everyone there, had no untanned skin. Va va va voom, all the way. Gorgeous.

She extended a hand. She did not rise up. Returning the gesture put my genitalia about two feet from her smiling face. Could I write this for family newspaper consumption?

Wooden questions came. Oh, she went on. She told me she was a medical student from UCSD, she had been reared in a family of nudists, that she found that clothing inhibited her ability to study, yah-dah-dee-yah-dah.

She writhed in Gentlemen’s Club style as she spoke. I held my skinny notepad over my privates and scrawled. I was the entertainment.

One of the spectators had a grandmotherly face, the common tan, and more candor than some. She said she lived on an acreage in the East County, loved her freedom and dressed only to drive into town for necessaries.

Her opinion was do it if you like it, or don’t if you don’t. Then, in words I haven’t forgotten, she went on: “Don’t quote me on this, but everybody here is either a voyeur or an exhibitionist.”

She pointed to my next subject.

That man might have benefitted from consultation. He described himself as a schoolteacher from Fallbrook. He barely had a tan. He wore a brim-all-the-way-around cloth hat and huge black sunglasses, and he sported a short beard.

He answered all of my questions with his hand covering his mouth, and the main point he made was that people need to be open and uninhibited. Oh my.

Then came the bodybuilder. He had little to say, but every move of his heavily muscled frame was a pose. He enjoyed being seen.

And there were others, all rather expectable. I filled the reporter’s notebook. But what for?

It seemed the Back County lady had the clearest idea. I could have added, but the idea came later, that most of the members were just there as a hobby. Baring bodies in public could well have been a substitute for membership in a car club, belonging to a hiking club or being in a bowling league.

The ASA people enjoyed doing something along with everybody else—that sense of belonging. Bareness operated as the badge of belonging. There was no reason to call the cops or the Moral Majority.

However, the caper did force me into self-analysis. I realized that conformity was a powerful lure. I felt more uncomfortable being the only person there, out of several hundred or even a thousand, who was wearing clothes.

Disrobing brought a kind of peace, but only at that time and place. I felt no need for an encore.

Another realization was that clothing operates as a swagger stick. It identifies who is important and who is not. At the Swallows camp, I couldn’t tell a banker from a laborer, a judge from a typist, etc. We dress to impress, or to hide.

So, why did the media care? Titillation comes to mind. Harold Keen to the forefront.

During the first two hours at the Swallows Camp, I recognized no other reporters. If any were there, they were invisible in their nakedness. Then Harold Keen splashed in.

With cameras rolling, two if I recall correctly, he stood behind a bed sheet held up by the corners by people with clothes on, presumably station staffers.

Although screened behind the sheet, he wore only black calf-high hose and dress shoes. He made his report and ended it by flipping his underwear over the sheet and at the cameras.

I saw one San Diego Union reporter there but didn’t approach her. She was dressed and I wasn’t. If she recognized me, she made no sign. A chat just then would have been awkward.

I went on my way, more comfortable and asking better questions and getting more informative answers. I can’t say now whether other media covered the event or ran stories or photos later. I believe Keen’s piece did air.

A group of teens, again all bare, asked to be interviewed as a group. They selected a low beach chair for me to use, then clustered around me to say essentially that they wanted to have their own say about nudism, which as far as I could tell was mostly a family affair for all of them. In a nutshell, the youngsters parroted their elders and added little.

To be very personal, I did not anticipate seeing both genders of all ages in the undress. Subconsciously, I must have believed ahead of time that anyone who would undress in public had to have pinup and Chippendale qualities. There were some of those, but a minority.

What I recall the most was parade of dismally sagging bodies of the elderly, more than enough obesity, ordinary and lesser physiques and—and I wasn’t really prepared—surgical scars.

It was a sexy assignment. From the outset, I experienced plenty of electricity between the navel and the knees and kept looking down to see if it showed. It never did, and I inquired.

I was told that few men experience visible signs of stimulation in ASA settings except in two situations: being touched by a female or being alone with one. No danger that day.

Getting back to work, I filed a brief report saying the debates on booze and dancing would come later. Immediately, UPI’s New York desk telephoned this order: Forget about that stuff and write about what it was like, how it felt. I could go to all of 500 words, the deskman said.

I wrote it, Spartan in 500 words, and later regarded the report as lackluster. But then, maybe I was in the minority.

Months later I was sent to cover a meeting of physicists in La Jolla.

During cocktails before the presentations began, one scientist commented: “I don’t know much about San Diego, but there is one hell of a writer here. He wrote about going to a nudist camp and taking it all off.”

I said nothing.