Further Tales of Misspent Youth: Angie Sester's Van
This is an unbelievable story. You'll think I'm lying, or at least telling a tall tale. There are too many improbable escapes from disaster, too many examples of the foolish hubris of youth, too many things that had to go right that had no business going right. You'll find yourself at various points uttering sentences to yourself that begin with phrases like, "But how could...", or "That doesn't make any sense, because..."
The truth is, I can't explain some of the things that happen in this story, but I assure you, every word is true.
It was my junior year of high school. The next day was one of those parent/teacher conference days or something, so there was no school. As kids with a free weeknight, we decided to hit the town. There were nine of us in total: me, Clinton, Charlie, Trash Can, Diana, Dee, Lisa, Angie and Sheri.
At first, our plan was to go catch a movie, Sting's Bring on the Night concert film. As luck would have it, Angie had access to a van, so we could all ride in one vehicle. Party on wheels, right?
Well, not just yet. As I recall, we did go to the theatre, but for some reason or another either couldn't or decided not to see the movie. After all, we had a free late night on our hands; why waste it sitting in a theatre watching Sting? (Though for my part, I loved the Dream of the Blue Turtles album and really wanted to see the movie.)
After some deliberation, we opted instead for some youthful capers and hijinks. Our first order of business was to find alcohol, no easy feat when you need to find alcohol for nine 16 and 17 year olds on a weeknight. Or so it was on most nights; on this night, Sheri directed us to either her brother or uncle's house, who literally wrote our massive order down on paper and came back moments later with everything we asked for. I remember being shocked at just how enthusiastic the guy was to do us this favor.
Being teen drinkers, it wasn't enough that we just get beer. Oh, no. In fact, I don't think anybody got beer at all, though I could be wrong about that. I was partial to two liter bottles of either Sun Country or California Cooler wine coolers, with a bottle of Southern Comfort for good measure. Clinton usually got the Comfort and a six pack of Malt Duck. (That's one of the things I can't explain in this story.) Eventually, our liquor order in hand, we piled back into the van and set off on our course for the evening.
Yes, I'm cringing as I write this, hoping my kids never, ever do anything like this. The past is often not as flattering or glamorous as we would like it to be, but it's still worth looking back at certain events, either as cautionary tales or pure entertainment.
This story is both.
At this point, it's worth introducing our driver in this story. Angie was one of the nicest people any of us knew. She was tall, a perfect example of 80's fashion (usually in a good way), and also happened to be almost a full year younger than the rest of the people in her class. As a result, while most of us had been driving for well over a year, she was a newbie behind the wheel. In fact, I'm not even sure she drove a car regularly at that point, and she certainly didn't have experience with the van, which belonged to her stepdad or dad, I believe (her parents were divorced). But, for whatever reason her mom had access to it, and Angie's good fortune was our good fortune. I'm 95% sure Angie wasn't drinking, and if so, that's the only correct decision anybody made all night long.
Of course, the van itself was...well, let's talk about that in a few moments. The important point for now is that a van was a perfect staging area for all kinds of mischief. Personally, I would have preferred everybody else leave Diana and me in the van so I could make the move I had been planning for the last eight years, but instead we loaded up on toilet paper and started going through a list of potential victims. I reasoned that once Diana saw what a virtuoso I was with a roll in hand I'd have to fight her off, so it was probably better that way anyway.
The first two houses we TP'd went off without a hitch, and nobody was the wiser till the next morning, most likely. Our victims were classmates, but I don't remember why we chose them in particular. What mattered was that we were a rolling, badass TP machine. We were nine strong, we'd pour out the back of the van, do our deed and disappear through those same back doors all in a matter of moments. We were unstoppable.
We should have called it quits after two houses, gone somewhere and drank. Of course, we couldn't have drank even half of what we had in the van, but still. Instead, we started to TP Mike Wilson's house. Mike was a great guy we all liked, so it was one of those friendly TP's.
Of course, that wasn't what Mike or his older brother wanted to hear when they saw an army of drunkards heaving rolls of toilet paper through the boughs of their oak trees. I was in mid-heave when the front porch light came on. Panic set in, and we all began to flee. Some of us were faster than others, but nobody dawdled as we sprinted to the open rear doors of the van. Angie and at least one other person had stayed in the van, to help with the fast getaway. As it turned out, the getaway was a little too fast, as Angie started to pull away before most of us were even in the van. There we were, a half-dozen teenage drunks trying to jump into the back of a moving van while two very pissed off people were chasing after us yelling threats of bodily harm.
We had enough of a head start that we all made it in, closed the doors and started our getaway. Mike and his brother did an about-face and went to get in their car for pursuit. It seemed pretty obvious that Mike didn't see any of us clearly enough to know who we were; if he had I don't think he would have pursued so aggressively. (Then again, he's sitting home with his brother on a weeknight with no school tomorrow; why wouldn't they chase TPers who left behind the smell of a distillery?)
The chase was on. We immediately turned west on 38th, and took it all the way to Topeka Boulevard, where we turned north. The Wilson brothers stayed hot on our trail the whole way, and finally pulled beside us as we sped by Furr's Cafeteria ("Best Furrburgers in town!"). I could see the look of surprise on Mike's face as he finally recognized some of the people in the van.
Then something happened.
It wasn't necessary at that point for us to use evasive driving techniques. If anything, Mike and his brother wanted to party with us. But rather than slow down, we immediately hung a left, and turned into the parking lot of Commerce Bank and Trust. This was impressive in it's own way, because we totally gave the Wilson brothers the slip, but what came next was a disaster.
Once in the parking lot, we didn't turn or slow down. In fact, we sped up, hurtling straight toward the bank's drive-through lanes at around 30 mph. That may not seem like much, but after going through the drive-through lanes, cars had to make an immediate right turn to avoid hitting a brick wall. What's more, the drive-through lanes were under the bank, effectively forming a sort of tunnel that was well-lit and plainly visible from Topeka Boulevard.
I want to take a step back here and mention two things. First, even though it was probably past 10:00 at this point and the bank was closed, that portion of Topeka Boulevard was one of the busiest stretches of road in the city. There was a ton of traffic, and there was usually a heavy police presence on the street as well.
Remember this: The drive through lane of the Commerce Bank and Trust was highly visible to a lot of people that night.
The second thing you need to know about is Angie's van. This was not your fancy-pants Good Times conversion van with the captain's seats and the cool tear drop window in the rear panel. This was a shitty industrial van that we were probably all better for not having seen the interior of in daylight. But the thing you really need to know about this van was the way it looked. It was bright red, white and blue, with the top and window frames red, the middle white, and the bottom panels blue. It looked like it had been painted for a Bicentennial Parade in 1976. It was ugly, but more than that, it was damn noticeable.
OK, back to the van hurtling toward the brick wall. There was much screaming, but it was that weird kind of screaming that only moments before had been fun-loving excited screaming that morphed into "We're going to crash into a brick wall and I drank too much Malt Duck!" screaming.
That's not a scream you ever want to hear.
The good news is, we never hit the wall. The bad news is, we hit something else. We hit it hard.
Angie, bless her heart, wasn't yet familiar with the brake pedal, but thankfully she wasn't so great at driving straight, either. Instead of driving straight through the drive-through lane and smashing into the wall, Angie took the van in at an angle, and somehow managed to smash the front left fender of the van into and over a three-foot tall, one-foot diameter concrete barrier pole that was protecting the little teller machine that moves those little plastic tubes out to the cars so people can deposit their money.
Read that again. She didn't just hit the pole. She hit the pole, and then somehow got the wheel well of the van up and over the pole, such that the van was absolutely, 100% stuck.
Oh, and she also managed to break the front axle of the van.
And, for good measure, we moved the teller machine a good foot off it's base, exposing a huge underground lighted conduit that one could use to get into the bank.
So, to review: We have lodged a giant late '70s model red, white and blue van with a broken front axle on top of a concrete pole and damaged bank equipment so badly that an alarm must surely have been triggered, all perhaps 60 feet from and in plain view of heavy traffic. That, and there was liquor all over the van and us.
That's when the weird shit started to happen.
First, although the shock of the impact was pretty harsh, no one was injured beyond a few scrapes. (I still have a scar on my shin, though.) That fact alone is on the short list of things that anybody in that van should be grateful for in life. Once the van stopped rocking on its concrete perch, we all poured out in a drunken hysterical freak-out state.
The first order of business was to ditch all the alcohol. Some of it found its way into nearby bushes, some ended up in a dumpster.
About a minute later, after Angie had been calmed down to only being in hysterics, we started to think of a plan. Despite the compelling evidence presented throughout the entire preceding part of the evening, this was a bright and resourceful group of people. But how the hell were we going to get out of this? I mean, there's deep shit, and there's deep shit. We couldn't just leave Angie, and even if we wanted to, we had no way to leave. The cops were going to be there any minute either because they were going to drive by and see us or they were going to hear the bank alarm. And oh yeah, we were all drunk. Only some kind of supernatural genius could possibly save the day.
Turns out, on that day, or at least at that moment, I was the supernatural genius. Believe me, I was due, and I used it all up that night, too, so don't expect me to solve any of your problems. But on that night, I was Angie's knight in shining armor, coming to her emotional rescue.
First thing I did was remember that my friend Brad (not my current friend Brad; different Brad) worked at the grocery store on the corner of 29th and California, just about two blocks away. Brad had a cousin who owned a tow truck service. Could we possibly be lucky enough that Brad would be working, and his cousin could come use his wench to get us off the pole, then tow the van back to Angie's, all without being found out by the cops?
Yes, we could be that lucky.
The funny part of that was that I had to wait in line while Brad rang people's groceries up at his register. Jesus, that seemed like it took forever. Finally it was my turn. Brad saw me and said something like "What's up?", and I had to lean over and whisper to him that we had a big problem at Commerce Bank and the cops were probably coming and we needed his cousin (who none of us knew at all) to come tow us away for free, like, in the next five minutes. Brad immediately slapped the "closed" sign on his register, turned off his lane light, tore off his grocer's smock and said, "Let's go." He was like Grocer Superman, and he couldn't have come at a better time.
The long and short of it is that the tow truck showed up faster than any of us could believe. It was like he was cruising around on call for just such an event. I remember the way he shook his head when he stepped up and saw what we had done. He looked at the brick wall, then back at the pole, then back at the wall. I think somebody just told him it was a long story, and then he got right down to the business of getting the van off the pole.
Fast forward to Taco Tico over by my high school, about a half hour later. Brad's cousin took the van to Angie's mom's; I don't remember how the rest of us got to Taco Tico, but we were there and damn glad for it. But the night wasn't through; somebody was going to have to take Angie home, and somebody was going to have to explain why Old Glory was all busted up and listing out in the parking lot of their apartment complex.
Now, you probably noticed that my supposed moment of supernatural genius back at the bank was really nothing more than luck and opportunism. If Brad's not working that night, I'm not only not a supernatural genius, I might not have gone back to the bank at all. No, my real contribution to the evening was yet to come.
I was the one Angie wanted to go home with her to tell her mom.
I had met Angie's mom once before, I think. I remembered thinking she was cool, a little on the young side, it seemed to me, but reasonable enough. Angie and I walked over to my car, which was parked at the high school, and headed to Angie's.
Her mom was surprised that Angie was getting home at that hour, and even more surprised that Angie was obviously bringing a guy into the apartment at that hour. It certainly had to be clear that Angie had something very serious to discuss and that I was an integral part of it. It never occured to me at the time, but I wonder if she thought I had put Angie in the family way or something.
Whatever she thought, she didn't have much time to think it. I remember we sat down on an ottoman, and I started to speak but mostly stammered. Angie's mom got a little impatient, what with the late hour and the very clear notion that she was about to hear some bad news, so she said "Out with it," or something like that.
I explained the evening in very general terms, you know, like "A bunch of us went to a movie, and then some people were chasing us, and we were scared, and then, uh..."
"And then what?", she said, leaning forward. "What did you do?"
I blurted out, "We hit a bank teller with the van!"
She gasped, her hand covering her open mouth. "You hit a bank teller? Are they OK?"
I was actually relieved at that point. "No, no. We hit a teller machine, not a person. You know, that thing that you put the money in and it goes through a tube. Anyway, the van's busted up a little bit, but Angie did a great job of driving, mostly, and..."
She stood up and said, "Thank you for bringing Angie home. You can go now." And let me tell you, I wasted no time heeding that advice, though I did pause enough to give Angie a hug. She was crying, as she had been for much of the night, but I could tell that while it was going to be a bad night for her, it wasn't going to be that bad. Between airbrushing out some of the ugly details and the fact that Angie was a model kid most of the time anyway, Angie wasn't going to have it nearly as bad as many kids would have if they had come home with similar news. Angie's mom probably hated that van anwyay.
As with most decent stories, this one has a postscript. Channel 13, WIBW, had a running feature at the time, called the Crimestopper's Crime of the Week. And wouldn't you know it, but the next week there was a story about a certain red, white and blue van that had been involved in some damage at the Commerce Bank and Trust. Anybody with knowledge of the crime was urged to call police, an offer we all declined.
Much to my delight, I recently learned this story has a second postscript. When I was talking to Clint a couple weeks ago, I asked him about the events surrounding Angie Sester's Van, just to make sure I had my facts straight. Turns out I did. At some point in the conversation, I asked him if it was true that we did in fact hide all the liquor in bushes and a dumpster. He confirmed that to be the case, then added:
"Yeah, I went back and got all of that liquor the next day. Dug it out of the dumpster myself. It lasted me for weeks."
10:57:36 PM 
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