Isle of Palms Magazine Summer 2017

17 www.IsleOfPalmsMagazine.com | www.ILoveIOP.com | www.IOPmag.com he suffered through a harrowing nightmare. Fortunately, it was only a bad dream. “There were dead bodies, and when they pried their hands open, they found pingpong balls with “Follow Me To Malibu East” imprinted on them,” he explained. “Some day I’ll write a book. The names will be changed to protect the guilty, because no one was innocent,” Myatt concluded. Malibu East is long gone, though its memory lives on in the work of playwright and IOP Councilman Jimmy Ward, who wrote a play about the bar and Deputy Dawg, Myatt’s yellow Lab who allegedly ran up tabs at several local drinking establishments. These days, Ricky Myatt’s entrepreneurial spirit is tacking in a different direction. He and his partner, Paul Schwartz, are selling all the equipment a person would need to play stickball: a “half-ball” made of sponge rubber and a 42-inch-long, 1.5-inch diameter chunk of poplar that resembles a broomstick, which is exactly what kids in the large cities in the North have used to play the game in streets and alleys for a century or more. “We’re dealing with something that either you know what it is or you don’t know what it is,” Myatt tried to explain. The same probably could be said about the beach town that existed before Hurricane Hugo tore it to shreds and the vacation destination that was rebuilt in its place. Stickball bats dominate Ricky Myatt’s garage. Photo by Jess Wood Photography.