Yarns Without Threads 

Spread out on cotton blankets and beach towels, and oiled like a school of Channel swimmers, lay the other members of the Spice Pond Swimming Club-a euphemism for what could more accurately be called the Spice Pond Nudist Camp. ...

... Professor Cooney said, "... Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, we have a less serious matter to consider. According to Miss Toffler, our camp had an uninvited visitor this morning."

Mary Cooney looked up from her endless scarf. "What did he look like, Tina?" she asked.

"A little man with a face like a fist, all chin and nose and forehead," Miss Toffler said.

"When was this?" Frank Ferguson asked.

"Early." Tina propped her sunglasses up on her forehead, revealing a pair of brown and sincere eyes. "I woke up about five thirty. This is my first day of vacation, and I didn't want to waste a minute of sunlight. I've gotten pretty pale over the winter. Anyway, I went to the kitchen to fill the percolator and plug it in. Then I ran down here to the pond for an eye-opener swim. I was about halfway when I saw this fellow in khaki trousers, heavy shoes, a light jacket, and a red cap. He was skulking over by the entrance road, as if he were waiting for someone."

"My goodness," Anne Anders said. "Anybody should be ashamed to be wearing all those clothes on such a beautiful spring day."

"Maybe he was," Tina said. "The instant he saw me he took off behind the toolshed. I ran to wake up Jason and Professor Cooney, and they tried to find the man."

"I ran all the way to the entrance gate," Amos Cooney said, scratching at a fresh briar-scratch on his right thigh. "The electric lock hadn't been tampered with, and the gate was closed. Meanwhile Jason searched the buildings, but there was no sign of our guest. Tell them what else you saw, Tina.

"I swam across the pond and back," she said. "When I stepped out onto the beach to get my towel, I looked up toward the highway and saw a flash of light-like the reflection off the lens of a telescope or a pair of binoculars. I dropped the towel and jumped right back into the pond."

"Modest girl," the Professor said. He drew back his feet to make way for tanned four-year-olds, the Ferguson twins, scampering by in chase of their ragged puppy. The trio splashed into the shallows of Spice Pond, yipping in fine disregard of their elders. "I would guess that our spy perched himself on the scaffolding of the billboards beside the highway, the only vantage point from which one can peer into our camp," Cooney added.

"We can't allow that sort of thing," Frank Ferguson said. He was father to six of the children who shouted and jumped around them, and of a seventh held in Frances' arms beside him. "What would happen if this spy had a camera with him, one with a telephoto lens?"

"Doom," Jason Bailey boomed over his beard.

"My goodness," Anne Anders whispered. Her blush slipped over her face and down her body like a pink shift. "What would Mr. Mueller, the chief cashier, say if someone showed him a picture of me dressed like this?"

"First 'Wow!'-then 'You're fired!'" Jason Bailey guessed. He smoothed his mustache into line with his beard, gazing up toward the trees that screened the grounds of the Spice Pond Nudist Camp (Swimming Club) from the public highway.

"I'd be out of a job faster than you can say 'Unemployment Compensation,' " Frank Ferguson said. "Pictures of me and Frances and the kids romping around au naturel out here would be held incompatible with the dignity expected of the manager of the Pottawattomie office of the State Employment Service. Our legislators are pretty square."

Professor Cooney tossed a pebble out into the pond, splashing the flailing pup. "It is deplorable that we lack the freedom our friends on the continent enjoy," he said. "In England, Germany, Finland, nudism is no more looked down on than stamp collecting. Our problem simply proves that we have years to spend yet, educating our fellow Americans on the naturist way of life."

"We haven't got years, Professor," Frances Ferguson pointed out. "Frank and I have a two-week vacation, which I'd just as soon not waste chasing off a Peeping Tom." Her slim body, flecked with cinnamon freckles, belied her status as a seven-times mother-although the baby in her arms, whose diaper made him overdressed in this company, helped remind them.

"I say, let's call the police," Tina Toffler said.

"They'd only tell us to put on pants," Jason Bailey growled. "You know how they treated folks caught wearing monokinis on Chicago beaches, those topless bathing suits? Well, they'd be even less sympathetic toward all of us in no-kinis."

"We've got to try something," Tina Toffler said. "Maybe the Spice Pond Swimming Club is everything it says on our membership form-The Midwest's Oldest, Newest Nature Camp; but to outsiders, nudism means revels, Roman orgies, and wickedness. We've got to preserve our privacy or we'll lose our Club."

"My goodness," Anne Anders said. "If I knew that photographs of me were being passed around in Pottawattomie bars and locker rooms, I'd just die! I really would. I'd have to leave home. My family would never understand-especially Daddy. I could talk till I was blue in the face about the philosophical, psychological, and physiological values of sun culture, the way Professor Cooney does, but Daddy would just blush and disown me."