70s culture shock - a grown man & small boy NAKED in a pool?!?!?!

I was a kid during the 1970s. While I don't remember nudity being tolerated in public pools, all I can say is that the joke itself would have gone over differently in the 1970s. Many jokes or dramatic situations involve some kind of unlikelihood or exaggeration, and we suspend our disbelief to make it work. How much we're willing to suspend our disbelief depends on the context and the effectiveness of the art. I can say that in the 1970s, we might have chuckled or groaned at the unlikely setup of this scene, but we wouldn't have rejected it completely. We would have just kind of gone along with it, and the premise wouldn't have stood out as it does today. While I don't think swimming nude in public pools was tolerated, certainly there was a looser general standard in those days, especially when it was all males -- like on a scout camping trip (I know, I know). But even then it was more like swimming in your underwear and that sort of thing.

Somehow that is just not hot
but at least they do not go
behind the barn to get naked

The thing of the matter is
that the YMCA
actually forbids bathing suits
or at least
when they had a YMCA
around here

The problem is
that male bathing suits
are made out of wool
and they fall apart
in Chlorine anyway
and then get stuck
to jam up those
YMCA swimming pool ventilators
so male nudity
is actually mandated
by most YMCAs

or at least the one
which is the target
of those Village People

But in outdoor swimming pools
wow they did not have those
for a long time either
since around the time
of E is Enough
Males would have to walk naked
through streams of freezing water
before they could climb those steps
to put on bathing suits
even if their fathers were with them

Who else is going to coax them
to go through all of that torture
and then for what
a swimming pool
not hot at all

Or maybe that was the whole point
because that cures everybody
of any lust
faster than your best Churches can

That is
if there were anybody
to lust over
so just watch this show
and cure yourself
of A Rich and D VanPatten

Or you could save yourself the trouble
and just think about that overnight
if it would take anybody that long

[harp] 🎻 [saint] [candle] [piano]

♪  Not even Mad Scientists
get it right every time

I took swimming lessons at the Y in the early 70's. I assure you we all wore suits...this was simply for comedic purposes.

Happened across this looking up stuff on Adam Rich. Nude swimming was once indeed the practice at the YMCA, for a number of decades in fact, from its origins up to the mid-70s in some areas. (Same for sex-segregated swimming at boarding and even public schools.) This is pretty well documented in old newspapers and by plenty of people still alive that remember it. There's a Wikipedia article on it as well as a YouTube documentary somebody put together. There are actually references to it on older shows like Leave it to Beaver.