Interview of John R. Kinnett, Jr.

Interview Team: Julien Malebranche, B.J. Chapman

Faculty Facilitator: Mr. Linn

Date of Interview: 3-10-06

John Kinnett was born April 4, 1927. At the time that World War II broke out he was still in high school and living with his family in a house at 1408 Wildwood Ave. The Kinett’s helped with the wartime housing shortage by renting out a bedroom in their house, as well as an apartment in back of their house. He was too young to enlist in the army, but he did work in his father’s dairy. His father was the owner of Kinnett Dairy on 6 th Ave, which was a staple here in Columbus until recently. He related that his great grandfather had worked in the Phenix Eagle Mill, as did his grandfather. It was his grandfather’s brother who got into the grocery business, then into the ice cream business.

He chuckled as he remembered working there at age thirteen, printing labels for the ice cream which was delivered to Ft. Benning. When he got a little older he would be working in the cold storage room, where it would get to be twenty degrees below zero. At that time they didn’t wear any insulated gear. All they had were t-shirts and maybe some coveralls. He said the hours were long and it was very cold.

Of course when he wasn’t at work he was at school. At that time he was attending Columbus High, where he was a good athlete. He told us that he did three things in school, “play basketball and football, and keep my grades up.” The football team was really good from what he can remember. In fact, they traveled as far as Miami, Florida and Chattanooga, Tennessee to play championship games.

It was during these high school years, when he was sixteen, that he met the woman that he would one day marry. He said he would never forget that day. It was the first time that his father had ever let him take the car out by himself. He was going to a social set up by the High-Y. That’s where they met and the rest is history.

For young people at that time there were a couple of places that were known to be hot spots. His favorite places were GooGoo’s on Linwood Ave and Choppies on 4 th and 2 nd. He said his favorite thing to get was the steak sandwich that they served. Since it was a drive-in you needed a car. He didn’t have one, so he said they would bum a ride from someone that could drive.

That’s how he got around some of the time, just hitchhiking here and there whenever there was a need; but, the main mode of transportation was his bicycle. He only lived a few blocks away from the school. Plus, this helped to cut back on gas since it was being rationed.

He can remember other things like eggs and flour being rationed as well. At that time, Well’s Dairy sold milk, Kinnett Dairy sold ice cream. As an ice cream producer, the company would need sugar in order to produce the ice cream. Sugar supplies were limited for making civilian ice cream. However, ice cream produced for the military, which was shipped to Ft. Benning, had no restrictions. The rationing didn’t put them out of business but it surely didn’t help. He also mentioned that gas and tires were rationed, but that essential businesses received extra quantities of rationed items to keep them in business.

Mr. Kinnett remembers gas rationing being here in Columbus, but not across the river in Phenix City. There were a few other things that he remembers about Phenix City, but they weren’t too “kosher“. He did say good things about the residents, though. The dairy did get some of its milk from farmers in Phenix City and elsewhere in Alabama. In fact, to the best of his memory a lot of the problems in Phenix City didn’t come from the residents but from visitors, the soldiers, to be more specific. He said they would go over there starting fights with each other and civilians. That’s why he wasn’t really allowed to go over to that side of the river.

By 1944 he had finished high school. He ended up going to Georgia Tech. He recalls getting rides to school or sometimes using the “Man O’ War”, a train that went from Columbus to Atlanta, as his modes of transportation. Shortly after starting school he enlisted in the Navy. The war ended before he had a chance to go overseas. When asked why he chose the Navy, Mr. Kinnett explained that he had seen enough of the army while in Columbus. He did add, though, that he didn’t like the Navy all that that much, either. Some of his other friends, though, had fought in the war. He told us about one of his friends from high school that died in the Pacific. They had played football together. He graduated one year after his friend.

Mr. Kinnett still remembers what was going on when he heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed. He was outside with some friends playing backyard football across from the present location of the Burger King on Wynnton Road, when someone came outside and told them what had just happened. He also remembers his feelings about the bombing of Japan. He said he was happy, not because people were being killed, but because the end of the war was that much closer. At that time no one wanted all those people to die but at the same time “they brought it on themselves”; he says, “It needed to be ended and we ended it.”

When asked about the famous Katy, the Kinnett cow, he noted that Katy didn’t arrive until the new dairy plant opened in 1967 near the airport. One of the workers had seen a similar cow on display in Florida, and the dairy decided to get one for its new location.