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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

most of the baseball players were farm and country boys because there were not diamonds to play on in urban areas.

Q:

Did you aspire to become a professional athlete?

Foner:

I was never good enough to be a professional athlete. As a matter of fact, I was a substitute on the college basketball team. It was clear I was not going to go anyplace. There was no point anymore. I was playing in the band and that, but I'm running ahead in my story.

Q:

Okay. One other thing, just of a point of curiosity I've always had, my father describes downtown Brooklyn as being an incredibly alive and thriving kind of place. It was like Broadway.

Foner:

But what year is he talking about?

Q:

He's about five or six years younger than you.

Foner:

The only time I went to downtown Brooklyn was when I went to Brooklyn College, because Brooklyn College was located in an office building.

Q:

Really?

Foner:

Yes.

Q:

Before the campus?

Foner:

I still refer to that as the new building because when I was graduated in 1936 it was the last class before the opening of the new building in Brooklyn. So we were located in that area, a lot of people who went to school there with me. But later I became more familiar after the war because my first job in a union was in a department store and we represented the workers at Namn's and Loeser's and Oppenheim-Collins in Brooklyn, so I was around there all the time. But we never really went downtown Brooklyn for entertainment, except if I would go to the Brooklyn Paramount, was a key thing where people went to the movies. They had a stage show, and the Brooklyn Fox. But we didn't go there that often. We went there from time to time but I don't recall it.

Q:

You mentioned a story about going to Manhattan. You were how old then when you went to hear the comedians?

Foner:

My brothers were in high school, so I had to be in elementary school when I was doing it, and I would memorize acts. I knew all the gags. I'm jumping ahead. I was very interested in that thing because





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