Suburbs

One of the enjoyable things about working in this business is getting to do stories that are just absolute fun.

I got to do that this week.

A trip back to my high school days, venturing from Whitehaven into DeSoto County to swim at Maywood — the Beach within Reach.

Memories of hot days, cold water and stinging sunburns, made even worse by a miscalculated leap from the high dive that ends as flop more than a dive. The jukebox. The dancing. The spraying fountains. The pier in the middle of the pool. End-of-the-school-year picnics.

And the sand.

The sand around the pool easing into the depths of the water brought the biggest surprise for many. Its origin traced to the Florida Panhandle.

Scooped off the shore of Destin. The vacation mecca for many Mid-Southerners.

The Maywood story was part of our weekly series “Ask the Memphian,” pulling back the curtain on how things happened, things that aren’t around here anymore or events decades ago.

Since I’m the oldest person at our online publication, my stories for “Ask the Memphian” tend to focus on subjects of the ‘60s and ‘70s, long before the majority of my fellow journalists were born.

Maywood and its sandy beach certainly fit that category.

Whenever I told someone about the story, I would invariably ask: “Do you know where they got the sand?” to watch their reaction. Almost all of them were surprised — as I was — when I discovered the answer and how it got from the Gulf Coast to North Mississippi.

Research uncovered that Memphis businessman Maurice Woodson opened Maywood in 1931. At the time, Destin was a simple fishing village, so small that it didn’t even have its own census. The community’s count was included with all of Okaloosa County. So there probably weren’t enough people down there to even get upset with outsiders taking the sand.

David Spiceland, whose father, Jesse, ran Maywood during its heyday, dispelled the assumption that the sand was a one-time trip. Instead, it was replenished every year, so pure in Destin DNA that little crabs were transplanted from Destin to Maywood. The journey was made from Destin by truck, then to train, then to the Olive Branch pool.

One other thing I learned from working on the story: More than 50 years later, the B-side title of the Rolling Stones' “Brown Sugar” is a word still so taboo that an editor took it out of the Maywood story. That song didn’t get played on AM Top 40 radio because of its title, and still can’t get in a story 54 years later. But the 45 rpm record was on the Maywood jukebox, and you could hear it there.

Anyway, Hugh Armistead, the last owner of Maywood, closed the attraction in 2003, a victim of rising crime, increasing liability concerns and backyard swimming pools becoming more prevalent. A subdivision sits on the spot now.

But the Beach within Reach had a good 72-year run. The pool provided memories for an aging generation. Of day trips with picnic lunches by the water and lines of people waiting to bounce on a diving board.

Of chilly water and a hot sun.

And enough stories for an old scribe to tell its tale, resetting the memories of a pool that has vanished from the landscape. - Suburbs editor Clay Bailey

We hope you enjoy reading the latest news from our suburban reporters. If you’re a Daily Memphian subscriber, we appreciate your support. If not, please sign up for unlimited access to all of our local news coverage.