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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

country, and then playing at dances. So why shouldn't I do it? Great thing to do.

Q:

So you picked it up just because they had done it.

Foner:

That's all.

Q:

And you were like in the middle of high school?

Foner:

I probably was about a junior at that time when I started taking lessons. As a kid, I played the violin for about two months.

Q:

So the main things that you did in high school were play basketball and the saxophone. Were you any good at the saxophone?

Foner:

No, not really good.

Q:

But good enough to be in a band. You make it sound like everybody played a saxophone and was in a band.

Foner:

Everybody wasn't, but --

Q:

There were a lot of kids in Williamsburg, but only one band or two bands in the Catskills.

Foner:

Yeah, but we weren't very good, but then again, many bands weren't very good. But then to be a band in the Catskills, you didn't have to be very good. You played the standard kind of things. But then to become a band later that played dances, you were in competition with good bands, and we had certain advantages that they didn't have. We had contacts. At the beginning it was not political. We played at dances and clubs and that kind of thing, so you knew somebody. Later on it became, of course, our political contacts, I would promote and develop and get jobs.

Q:

That we'll come to as a different story.

Foner:

Okay.

Q:

What else in high school? What were the teachers like? Do you have any recollection of them?

Foner:

I remember some of the teachers who were good, but really, to come down to it, I was not a student. That's one of the reasons why I write poorly, is because I never applied myself in school, in high school or college to do that kind of work. You know, bumping through. Like anything else, tools get sharpened by using them. You don't have to be a great writer, but if you write a lot, you're going to





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