The Joy Of Soaks

Ancient Greeks And Cartoonists Unite To Shower Praise Upon Baths

June 26, 1991|By Steve Johnson.

The visitor to the historical society in Bath, Maine, seeking information on the ways in which people have satisfied the urge to submerge themselves will be, frankly, disappointed: a lot of dry stuff about shipbuilding and lobsters and not a word about the first rubber duckie, Benjamin Franklin`s optimal water temperature, the therapeutic value of hot tubs or the evolution of the luffa.

Equally short on bathing info is its counterpart in Bath, Ky., Bath County, Ohio, and even Bath, Ill., a tiny town about 45 miles down the Illinois River from Peoria.

There are many more geographical Baths that needn`t be mentioned here, but it should be said that the vast country of Canada, filled with about 26.5 million people, many of them hot and sweaty lumberjack types, appears to have just two Baths.

``Oh, is that right?`` says Kathleen Sarff, the postmaster of the Prairie State`s Bath, who goes on to assure that in her town bathing is practiced with neither more nor less vigor than in places with less apt names.

``Now I understand that Bath, England, has a lot of useful mineral baths. I`m sorry to say that this part of Illinois is not similar,`` Sarff says, adding that even the river is too polluted for wise people to swim in it.

The town`s name has, however, inspired a sort of municipal joke among the 500 residents. ``You`ll have somebody ask you how the water is here,`` Sarff says, ``and we all say that we drink Bath water.``

This is one of many interesting things learned during a Tribune inquiry into the life and times of baths, a topic that stretches back to the earliest gruntings of civilization and will still be around when our descendants speak Esperanto. Baths, alone among the washroom arts, hold endless fascination for people from all walks of life, or should. If further evidence of this is needed, consider that two songs directly related to bathing have hit the Top 20 during what Casey Kasem refers to as ``The Rock Era,`` as opposed to zero songs about makeup application or flushing the toilet.

One of them is, of course, ``Rubber Duckie,`` by Sesame Street`s Ernie

(apparently when he was a solo act), which hit No. 16 in 1970. ``Rubber duckie, you`re the one,`` it says, ``you make bathtime lots of fun.`` And later: ``Every day when I make my way to the tubby/I find a little fellow who`s cute and yellow and chubby/Rub-a-dub a duckie.``

The other is a song that Bobby Darin claimed to have written in 12 minutes, the infamous 1958 No. 3 hit, ``Splish Splash,`` about the singer`s Saturday night bath.

Into the inferno

To our knowledge, there is no current pop-culture peg (movie, book, what have you) on which to hang this story-no ``Baths of Glory,`` no ``The Muppets Take a Dip,`` no ``Full Porcelain Bath.`` President and Mrs. Bush have not kindled a national bathing a deux fad, nor have rock stars started mouthing platitudes about ``our disappearing bathtubs.``

No, the world is rife with bathtubs, popular culture is bereft of them, and this is, simply, a story about baths with no real reason to exist-none, that is, except that this reporter had never before performed his professional duties in the nude, and was ecstatic to finally be presented with a story idea that allowed this long-held dream to be realized.

It happened on a recent Wednesday afternoon at the Division Street Russian Turkish Baths, a sweltering old brownstone in the gentrifying Wicker Park neighborhood and devoted to the principle of the shvitz (Yiddish for

``sweat``) and the company of members of your own sex.

It is a place out of time, an authentically ill-lit labyrinth of staircases, locker and massage rooms, showers, whirlpool, cold-water bathtub, and the heart of it all, at least on the men`s side, the steam room, a basement inferno heated by baking chunks of granite.

Standing in front of the open oven door as one of the regulars tosses water in, you feel a heat that is unlike any you have felt before. It inspires you not only to ooze moisture, but also to forswear bourbon, so as to have better odds at achieving a more temperate terminus.

In order, you figure, to not pass out, the men keep cold, wet towels on their heads and periodically douse themselves with buckets of cold water. And, laid out naked on benches around the smallish room`s perimeter, many of them take turns giving each other rubs, a process that involves a seaweed broom, soap and the kind of physical contact that under other circumstances would provoke much chest puffery in defense of manhood.

``This is a place where men can come here with each other, get physical in a totally non-sexual way and share each other`s company,`` says Jim Linn, a 44-year-old associate judge in the felony branch of the Cook County court system who visits regularly for several hours at a time.

``Working out at the East Bank Club is good for me,`` he says. ``But this makes me feel good.``