Author’s note: This is the third installment in an ongoing series of personal stories exploring my family history and the legacy of my 2x great grandfather, Rudolph Johnson, a pioneer of early American naturism. Each piece in this series ties together the threads of my journey into naturism with the eccentric, inspiring lives of those who came before me.
With time and dedication, I hope these stories will form the foundation of a larger project, perhaps even a book. For now, they remain an intimate collection of true stories, shared exclusively with paid subscribers. More to come. Enjoy.
Lovina seemed genuinely bewildered that we’d gone to so much trouble for her. To her, it all felt like some kind of unnecessary extravagance, too much pomp for what she viewed as a meager accomplishment at best. We explained, of course, that one doesn’t turn ninety every day, but that’s just the way my grandmother is. She’s not one to make a fuss over herself—or anyone, really—and she certainly doesn’t expect anyone to make a fuss over her. Still, a small takeout lunch with a couple of family members and a store-bought cake could hardly be considered a “fuss.”
As modest as the celebration was, it felt important to me. I’ve wanted to celebrate Lovina and this milestone because I’ve always had a special fondness for her, even if I’ve never quite known how to express it. I’d thought about her ninetieth birthday for a couple of years now, imagining something bigger—inviting more people, planning an extravagant gift, maybe forcing her on a cross-country road trip to revisit her childhood home so she can again skinny dip in the frigid Deschutes River like she did in the summers of her youth; you know, something I could document with a couple 4K cameras and a basic mic kit, filming interviews along the way in an admittedly warped and obviously somewhat selfish pursuit to somehow put my family’s story into the form of a documentary film; the one I’ve long dreamt about but will probably never actually make because articulating the full story in all of its depth seems somehow too daunting a task to even wrap my head around––
Anyway, for obvious reasons, it had to be scaled back. Alas, something simpler felt more her style anyway.
Lovina, bless her heart, is not the warm, sentimental type. She bats away compliments and expressions of love like they’re house flies. She’s the sort of person who’ll say, “Okay, time for you to leave now,” the moment you’ve overstayed your welcome—which, for her, doesn’t take long. But when you really know Lovina, you understand that this is its own kind of love. She’s crass, sassy, and fiercely independent. She’s also unshakably strong. As she reminded us several times during her birthday party, she has no plans to “kick the bucket” anytime soon. Her goal, as she proudly declared, is to outlive her own grandmother, Mary, Rudolph’s dear wife, who she claims made it to 104.
Honestly, I believe Lovina can do it. She’s in good health and stays active. She’s still strong. Her memory has started to slip a little, which shows mostly in how often she repeats her favorite phrases. For instance, if you ask how she’s doing, she’ll grin and say, “A little too fat and blind in one eye, but otherwise flawless,” and then cackle as if you’ve never heard it before. It doesn’t help that it’s genuinely funny every time she says it, so I usually laugh anyway. She’s just like that.
The Lovina link
It was through Lovina that I first learned about Rudolph, her grandpa.
The summer after sixth grade, my mom sent me to stay with Lovina in Washington state for a month. The idea was to get me outdoors, off the video games, away from bad influences in my neighborhood, and teach me some responsibility. This was the summer of 1996.
My cousin, Ransom—who was a year or two older and a little more prone to trouble than I was—came along too for similar reasons. Our parents wanted us out of their hair, in the most loving way possible. And Lovina, ever the pragmatic, had a plan for putting us to work and giving us the formative experiences of early manhood that were just what the doctor ordered—or so they hoped. The job called for us to paint the exterior of her large detached garage, and to spend the month living outside.
Lovina’s house sat on land that had once belonged to Rudolph many years before in the Bald Hills of Thurston County, the same land where Lovina lived as a young child. Her small plot had been carved off from the original larger property and sat next to the old stone house and swimming pool Rudolph had built by hand. I first saw the gigantic rock structure as we drove in from the airport—a couple of strange cars parked in front of it—and my curiosity about it grew.
During those weeks, Ransom and I indeed painted the garage—a task that took us many more days than it might have. We distracted ourselves with a number of other boyish outdoor activities: catching snakes, fishing in the river, clearing trails, and building rafts that didn’t stay afloat. We slept in the garage and camped outside; Lovina wouldn’t let us sleep in her house despite having a guest room. Luckily, she let us in to use the restroom and shower every few days. Somewhere along the way, I discovered a photo album Lovina kept. She sat down with me and we leafed through it. The book was filled with images of her father, Antone, her mother and brother, her grandparents, her cousins, and many unidentified relatives. Lovina, it seemed, was brimming with stories of everyone, and apparently had nobody else with whom to share them.
The pictures and stories together depicted a family of hardworking hillfolk—always working, laughing, and enjoying life together and living by their own rules. Scattered throughout were photos of nudists: Rudolph and others, naked and doing things like gardening, swimming, and playing. There were even photos of Lovina as a child, maybe eight years old, playing naked with her cousins or her brother, Teddy, among a whole community of naked people.
That trip stuck with me for years after I went back home to Nevada, and Ransom and I have always shared a certain bond that we earned together in those Washington woods that Summer. Same with Lovina; I’ve felt close with her ever since that trip. During our time with her, I saw firsthand how hard she worked every day: toiling over her garden, tending to her chickens, gathering wood for the iron stove she heated her home with, and generally keeping herself busy with all kinds of errands and projects—even in her sixties. Twice a week she even drove an hour into Olympia to work out at the big gym with all the expensive weightlifting equipment. We had to join her each time, and each time she made us lift ourselves, at least for a little while before we became too bored and too much of a distraction to her own routine. Eventually, she’d let us go mess around in the racquetball rooms until she was done.
We visited Rudolph’s house once during that trip, knocking on the door and chatting briefly with the family who now owned it. They were kind enough to let us look around, but it was clear they didn’t want us staying long, so we didn’t. Still, it was quite magical, even then, to walk around in this place that had such an important place in the lore of our family.
I went home that summer with a deep fascination for Rudolph’s story, for Lovina’s strength, and for the eccentric legacy of my family. That strange nudist history lodged itself in me, becoming something I’d love to tell friends about well into adulthood—a bragging right of sorts. A quirk that made me feel different and proud.
The strong grandma
Not everything was hunky dory for Lovina growing up. Lovina does not speak fondly of her mother, who, as she tells it, was not nice. When she was in her pre-teen years, Lovina’s mom divorced her dad and moved her and her brother, Teddy, south to California. This uprooted her from her grandparents, the nudists, and took her miles from the life she’d known.
Withholding and cold, her mother forced Lovina to grow up quickly. She was married to my grandfather at fifteen and gave birth to my uncle Bruce at just seventeen. My dad Bryan was born two years later, and then Mike, Ransom’s dad and the youngest of Lovina’s three boys, was born a couple of years later. By the time she was twenty-one, she was a mother of three, living in La Puente, California, and working in a school cafeteria.
Eventually, the family moved to Boulder City, Nevada. My grandfather, as I’ve pieced together, was sometimes emotionally abusive too, and at some point after the children were grown, Lovina and he divorced. Lovina got a job working in a restaurant and lived on her own.
Perhaps because of the difficult hand life dealt her, Lovina is not a traditionally warm or motherly figure. She isn’t big with kids. In fact, I have no memory of meeting her until I was at least ten years old, despite growing up in Boulder City, where she lived for many years of my youth. She’s spent much of her adult life living alone. Though she remarried in her sixties, she and her second husband didn’t even live together. She moved back to Washington state by herself, while he stayed in Nevada until his death in the late 1990s. After he was gone, she moved back.
In 1994, Lovina was involved in a head-on collision in Washington. The accident shattered her right leg in multiple places. During her recovery, while she was still in a leg brace, she began going to the gym to help her rebuild her strength. It was there that she began lifting weights. She soon “got serious” (in her words) about bench press, driving an hour away to her gym in Olympia at least twice a week. Eventually, a friend who had been interested in competing in a weight competition convinced her to join, and mostly out of an interest in doing something new, she agreed.
It was during this time that we visited, when she was intensely training, throughout 1996. She worked for several months to build her strength for the competition, and in 1997, she went on to compete and win in three competitions for her age and weight class in bench press. She first won in a state competition, then a national competition, and finally, in a world competition, obtaining a world weightlifting record at the age of sixty-three.
Much like with the stories of Rudolph and the nudists, I came to delight in sharing stories of my grandmother, the world record-holding weightlifter. I identified with these stories as another eccentric quirk about myself and the people I came from.
My grandmother, my muse
As I was first exploring my own self-expression as a young film student, I knew that I wanted to dive into my family history and the stories that had shaped me and my identity. At the time, I was attending film school with my brother, who was also my creative collaborator. While neither of us were particularly interested in becoming documentarians—narrative filmmaking appealed to both of us much more—a documentary course was a requirement of the undergraduate program. Each student was tasked with producing a short, small-scale personal documentary. Since we were both working toward individual grades, we weren’t allowed to share a project, which meant each of us needed to create our own film. Not surprisingly, we both ended up telling stories inspired by my grandmother and her history.
My film focused on Lovina’s competitive bench-pressing story, using quirky imagery and music to bring her tale to life. I called it The Strong Grandma.
My brother’s film told a more complex and emotional story about Rudolph the nudist and the relationship between my grandmother and her brother Ted. That six-minute film—which I did end up helping to write and produce in the end—went on to screen at several film festivals and was eventually included in a distributed short-film compilation. The film was titled Boots and Socks in honor of Rudolph’s preferred uniform.
These films were the start of what would eventually become a lifelong pursuit for me: collecting and sharing stories about this side of my family and their unconventional legacy. That pursuit has only grown over the years and now includes this newsletter and my history podcast, Naked Age. These early projects were my first attempts at documenting fascinating people who I admire because they have gone to extraordinary lengths to live authentically. I still revisit these films occasionally as a way to reconnect with that original inspiration. Furthermore, I still try to see Lovina as often as I can (she moved back to Boulder City about twenty years ago)—not only to spend time with her but also to pick her brain, to get her remembering her past, and hopefully to get her to share a little more of it with me.
The birthday party
Perhaps selfishly, getting her talking was also what I had envisioned for Lovina’s ninetieth birthday celebration. In the week leading up to her big day, I combed through a large collection of photos that I’ve pieced together over the years from various sources. Among them were many photos that Lovina has never seen; images I’d tracked down from Lovina’s living cousins, scans of photo albums that have been housed in the American Nudist Research Library in Florida for forty years, and even 8mm film reels I uncovered in an Oregon archive and painstakingly digitized into high-definition videos. These pictures captured my grandmother and her brother, her cousins, her aunts and uncles, her grandparents—sometimes clothed, often naked—effervescent and alive, savoring the fleeting joys of togetherness and youth. In total, there were probably thousands of images. I sifted through them all to create a slideshow of reasonable length to share with Lovina.
After popping a bottle of champagne and passing around glasses, I sat down next to Lovina and opened my laptop. For the next forty-five minutes, we went through the photos one by one, occasionally turning the screen to include the rest of the family gathered around. As we looked, everyone began sharing memories and personal stories—recollections of time spent on Rudolph’s land, tales of cousins and long-lost relatives, and anecdotes about ancestors who had passed on. Together, we laughed and reflected on who they were and what they built, embracing the shared heritage that connected us all.
When we were done, we ate lunch, finished off the champagne, sang the birthday song for Lovina, and cut the cake. Slowly, family members began trickling out, and soon, Lovina herself went home. As the day wound down, I felt a mix of emotions. There was gratitude for the stories we’d shared and the moments we’d created, but also lingering frustration with myself for not doing more to collect or preserve the memories and anecdotes that had surfaced.
I know that Lovina was touched by the gesture, minimal as it may have been. And I know it was deeply meaningful for me. Reviewing old photos together is something Lovina and I have done many times before—probably more than anything else, because I’m always trying to get her talking, to coax out the details of her past. I’ve recorded many of these conversations, but more often than not, I try to be present and enjoy them. No matter how much research I do, no matter how many photos I collect or conversations I record, there will always be things I can’t capture—stories that exist only in the memories of those who lived them. And when we lose those people, those memories disappear forever. We can try to save them, but we can never truly keep them. All we can do is embrace them and celebrate them while they’re still here, right in front of us.
Bonus points if it can somehow involve cake. 🪐
More from this series:
Laborious fruits
Author’s note: With a little luck, there will be more of these. With some time, there could be plenty. With some effort, they may just make a book. But for now, it’s only this, a personal short (true) story just for paid subscribers. Enjoy.
Lake Rudolph
Author’s Note: This is the second installment in a series of occasional posts exploring the history of my 2x great grandfather, Rudolph Johnson, a notable figure in early 20th-century American nudism. Today marks what would have been his 140th birthday—or possibly his 138th; the records are somewhat ambiguous. These posts aim to weave together Rudolph’s legacy with my own journey into naturism, a path that has unfolded from my extensive research into his life and my efforts to preserve his story.
Support this project with swag
It’s a personal passion project for me to research and write about the life of Rudolph Johnson. One way you can support the project is by picking up a Rudy the Nudie t-shirt with original artwork by Ahmed Raafat. Your purchase helps support this newsletter, and your t-shirt helps spread the word. Plus, it’s guaranteed to turn heads at the grocery store. 🚀
Get one in the Planet Nude gift shop.
A fascinating story. It makes me reflect on my own life and family members that are no longer here in one way or another. I can't help but think of my Mom, who passed in 1989 when I was 32. My Dad had died many years earlier, when I was 12 going on 13. For years, my mother had a shoebox (or two) filled with hundreds of pictures...going back to her childhood up to and including my parents courtship, their four children and such. My mother would say, "Some day we will sit down and I will tell you about the pictures and you can write who, what, where, when in the backs of each photo". Sadly, that day never came. I held on to those pictures for years and finally gave up and threw them away.
beautiful