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around, he’d flash his lights and shake his finger at us, but he was smiling when he did it, and we’d say, ‘OK, we’ll tone it down.’ We got along real wellwith him. We respected him, and he respected us.”
    Drugs were not an issue because nobody used them, or admitted to using them, and drinking was limited to some kids pounding down too many beers on a Friday or Saturday night.
    â€œI hung out with the jocks, the average kids, and I was friends with the hoodlums,” he says. “Because I was well liked and popular, I didn’t have peer pressure to do drugs or drink. I could hang out at the parties and be with everyone and not have to get involved.”
BRAD ’N’ THE BOYS
    That didn’t mean, however, that Brad Kasal was a choirboy or that he hung out with choirboys.
    One of his best buddies during high school was Randy Cornelison, now a 41-year-old self-described “gearhead” who lives near Adel, a small town north of Afton. Cornelison owned his own body shop for years before giving it up to run heavy equipment. Today he is married and has two sons. In high school he got into more than his share of trouble.
    Kasal describes Cornelison as his occasional nemesis as well as one of his closest high school friends. He claims Cornelison and Troy Tucker were at the root of most of his minor scrapes with trouble. The big ones, Kasal jokes, he managed on his own.
    All who knew the infamous trio remember the eyes of the teachers fastening on them when a disturbance unexpectedly broke out in the halls of East Union High. Whether it was skipping school, riding bicycles through the halls, or playing “grab ass” in the classroom, the three of them were usually involved in it together.
    Kasal remembers Cornelison as a big, gawky kid with a crazy sense of humor and a strong devotion to his two best friends. Cornelison in turn recalls Tucker as a “wild man” and Kasal as the quiet type.
    â€œTroy was a fast-driving, tough-talking country boy who didn’t mind egging on his buddies to stir up some shit on Saturday night when things got a bit dull,” Cornelison says. The three liked to play practical jokes on each other, get loud, and drive the nine miles to nearby Creston where they cruised the loop, driving aimlessly around on the main drag looking for girls or trouble or both.
    Their behavior was nothing exceptional. Like millions of young men from Small Town, USA, fighting and fornicating were the two most popular pleasures of the day in the early ’80s, although most of Afton’s young men weren’t usually successful in either pursuit. Kasal was an exception, Cornelison says. He backs up his assertions with stories from his private annals that present the trio as a cross between the Three Musketeers and the Three Stooges.
    â€œTroy and Brad and I would be somewhere,” Cornelison says. “Brad was such a nice guy he would never cause any trouble, but he was a tough guy—I mean tougher than shit. We would try and get him in a fight. We would walk up to some guy and tell him, ‘That guy over there wants to fight you because he thinks you’re a punk’ or ‘That guy over there has been checking out your woman.’ Something like that. But that was back in the good old days when after a fight you would get up and shake hands. Nowadays you’d get shot.”
MEMORIES
    More than 20 years later Kasal hasn’t forgotten his nights with Randy and Troy. The memories still make him chuckle, a kind of rasping sound he makes when he is telling a joke or relating a fond memory. He claims his life would have been much quieter if it weren’t for the antics of his buddies.
    â€œI would be standing there drinking a soda at the refreshment stand somewhere,” he says, “and the next thing I know some bigguy would walk up and tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, I heard you want to fight me.’ I’d