Culture

[BOOKS]

Written by KASEY NOSS

St. Louisans know Tower Grove Park (4257 Northeast Drive, 314-771-2679, towergrovepark.org) for various reasons, from its weekly farmers’ market to the wide array of sports leagues that call its grounds home. But how much do they really know about the park?

According to Amanda Doyle, author of a new book on the beloved St. Louis institution, not much. She hopes her book will change that.

The release of Tower Grove Park: Common Ground and Grateful Shade Since 1872 coincides with the park’s 150th anniversary, which was officially celebrated on September 28. The book offers a comprehensive history of the park from its conception in the late 1860s to the present day. The book includes sections on the botany and wildlife of the park, its architecture and built structures, and the various groups who have used the park over the years.

“There’s so much that I learned writing this book that I’ve never seen written down anywhere else,” Doyle says.

Despite having lived three blocks south of the park with her family for almost 30 years, Doyle knew little about it when she first took on the project two years ago.

“I use it like a lot of people in the neighborhood do, as a yard instead of my postage-stamp-sized city yard, but I didn’t really know all that much about it,” Doyle says.

She knew the basics, such as that the park was founded by Henry Shaw, the same wealthy philanthropist behind the Missouri Botanical Garden. However, her research into the park’s rich history has given her a new level of appreciation for it.

“Once you have that perspective, it’s easy to look around and see it differently than you did before,” Doyle says.

Tower Grove Park is special in many ways. For starters, it is a National Historic Landmark, a designation not commonly held by parks. It is also one of the last fully intact Victorian driving parks in the country, originally built to accommodate horses and carriages. Eleven original pavilions from the park’s construction remain in use today, such as the Music Stand, where local artists have been performing since the days of Henry Shaw himself.

The park is also a certified Level II Arboretum, boasting thousands of trees comprising hundreds of species. In this respect, it stays true to its original intention as an oasis from the demands of city life.

“It was always planned to be a sort of a respite and getaway from the hustle and the bustle and the dirt and the grime,” Doyle says.

In addition to detailed histories of various aspects of the park, the book features photographs and personal stories collected from frequent visitors, lending this history a heartwarmingly personal element that spans generations of visitors.

In one such anecdote, Doyle describes how St. Louisans in the 1930s and ’40s would flock to the park on hot summer nights, preferring to sleep among the cool trees instead of their homes, which lacked air conditioning. Entire families would head to the park, bed rolls in hand, and organize themselves by parish in what was essentially a mass sleepover. Doyle is fascinated by the way the park’s history mirrors that of the city and the country.

“Once you know the history a little bit, you see how its history has really reflected the city’s history and the country’s history,” Doyle says. “All of the social forces and changes and issues and movements that have happened in human society since 1872 have shown up in the park.”

The book concludes with a section about the park’s future, which in part describes the overwhelming resurgence in park visitors following COVID-19. Doyle is happy that the park continues to play a vital role in St. Louisans’ lives.

“People really changed their habits from being casual visitors to really getting intensely in touch with [the park] again,” Doyle says. “That’s a lot of it, too, just realizing how important these kinds of spaces are to us.”

Doyle has written eight other books on St. Louis and Missouri topics, including 100 Things to Do in St. Louis Before You Die and St. Louis Sound, An Illustrated Timeline. She considers local history, though often overlooked, to be deeply valuable.

“It’s so important to people’s lives, just [having] that kind of local history and people’s personal stories,” Doyle says. “We don’t always do a good job of preserving them, you know?” n

[EVERY MOTHER’S NIGHTMARE]

Written by BENJAMIN SIMON

Yes, Jim Ousley knows: Sketchcomedy albums are a thing of the past. But that’s why the genre, he says, was perfect for him and his group Boys With Scarves when the pandemic hit.

“It really seemed to have reached its peak [in] the ’70s,” he says. “We’re always a bit out of step with time and fashion anyway, so we thought, ‘Hey, so no one listens to sketch-comedy records anymore? Why don’t we do a sketch-comedy record?’”

The group, including Ousley, Chris Anich, Oscar Madrid and Grant Essig, have known each other for decades. Three of them met in Magic Smoking Monkey Theater back in the 1990s, when they did late-night shows and “crazy comedy for sometimes sober crowds.”

They have stayed friends ever since. When the pandemic began, they started messaging in their group chat. “We missed each other,” Ousley says. They couldn’t perform in venues or go on stage, and they felt squirmy to make something.

“When you’re a creative type, you start to go even more stir-crazy because your inclination is to entertain people and make people happy,” he says.

Somewhere in that chat, the idea of a sketch-comedy album was floated. They were big fans of the genre. So they started texting each other ideas. The ideas turned into scripts, and the scripts piled up. They went over to each other’s houses a few months later to write some more. Before long, they were recording, and not long after that, they had 25 tracks, then 15, then the final 10.

Two and a half years later, in September 2022, Boys With Scarves released its debut sketchcomedy album, Boys With Scarves.

When asked how he would describe the album, Ousley pauses.

“It’s sort of like a funny audiobook that is every mother’s nightmare,” he says.

He says they create comedy that makes each other laugh.

“Our sense of humor has not evolved — and I mean this — has not evolved past the age of maybe 10 or 11,” he says.

But beneath the jokes, the album was born out of real work, attention to detail and artistry. It’s not them sitting in front of a microphone, cracking a few improvised knock-knock jokes.

The skits feature a story. All told, it’s a collection of short stories, with characters, settings and journeys. In one skit, for example, a group of cowboys takes a trip along the West Coast with a preacher. Throughout the sevenminute track, Ousley, Anich, Madrid and Essig perform as multiple characters. They morph their inflection to sound like a cowboy or like an older man. And then, they’re interrupted by the sound of a farting horse.

“[A sketch-comedy record] is kind of like listening to an audiobook in a way,” Ousley says. “It’s for people who have the patience to put something in and listen to the sketches without that visual accompaniment. And that was part of our challenge –– making it really well produced and listenable. Really cool music and sound effects.”

This isn’t Ousley’s full-time job. He has a day job in IT. He even has a part-time job writing comics for a Houston company. He has a family. But comedy, he says, is important for a different reason.

Growing up in St. Louis, Ousley was shy and struggled with stuttering. “[Art] took me away,” he says. That’s what he hopes to give to others with comedy.

He doesn’t know what the longterm goals are for his group.

“I don’t think we’re sophisticated or organized enough to have any long-term goal whatsoever,” he says.

But he knows they are creating another sketch comedy record. Ousley wants to make more people laugh –– just like comedy did for him.

“Every time I wake up in the mornings, I want to make something,” he says. “Like, what can I make for somebody that will make them happy? Seriously. My whole goal in life is to leave behind as much fun stuff as possible.” n