Volume 8 , Issue 1

Anthony Wholesale Grocery, Bickel Bus Line & Old Memories...

"I can't answer any questions in regard to any passenger service connected with the Anthony Wholesale Grocery company, but I certainly remember their products and the 'parrot' label. It seems to me that one of the stores that carried some of their products was the old East Side Grocery (previously known as Eutsler's Grocery before my time) across the street from the city hall.

I also remember their warehouse down (I think) on Santa Fe Street near the area of the Co-op elevator.

I always thought the Bickel Bus Line was headquartered in Alva. The family lived about on the corner of Third or Fourth Street and Locust. There was usually a large, older-model bus parked in the yard there.

In my senior year at Northwestern in Alva (1960-61), my wife had graduated the previous spring and was teaching at Hudson, Kansas, about halfway between Pratt and Great Bend, Kansas and five miles east of US281. We had just one vehicle and on the weeks when she had the car, I would ride the Bickel Bus Line to St. John, Kansas, where she would pick me up.

By that time the bus line was in demise and they were using a Volkswagen van. On most trips I was the only passenger, so I sat in the front seat with the driver. I became acquainted with the two drivers on the route. Both were quite talkative and one was close to seventy while the other was probably around forty. Both were characters.

The older gentlemen talked endlessly of 'get-rich-quick' schemes, and just couldn't get over the fact that someone had made millions just by inventing and marketing something as simple as the 'hula hoop.'

The other always placed a large, loaded pistol in my lap. It was chambered for the then-new .22 jet cartridge. Seems this guy was always seeing coyotes on the route and his ambition was to shoot one. He instructed me on the use of the weapon and said that if we saw a coyote he would stop the bus and I would shoot the beast. Once he claimed to see one, stopped the bus, began shouting and pointing wildly across the landscape, and telling me to 'Shoot, SHOOT!' I never saw anything and he couldn't believe it.

It is quite likely that Anthony, KS was once on the Bickel route, but at that time they made a run several times a week to Russel and Ft. Hays and back to Alva. The routes had down-sized considerably from previous years, and I don't think the line operated too long after I graduated from college. It's Alva terminal point at that time was the Bell Sweet Shop at the old Bell Hotel on the square. I think the route was once bigger and it had several destinations in south-central Kansas.

I don't know if this helps or not, but you sure woke up an old memory for me." -- JIM   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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