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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

the feeling of unease and embarrassment because once they got into high school, they studied algebra. There they were on the streets doing algebra problems with chalk on the pavement. To me it meant nothing, you know, and I felt rather left out on the thing. But that was about all you could do. In addition to the library, you went to a bookstore because there were western novels that you could get that weren't in the library, that you could trade in every week, or you went to the candy store where you bought Nick Carters or paperbacks of Frank and Dick Meriwell that you read. Obviously we did a lot of reading because all of these books seemed to float in and out of our lives and handed down and moved around, but they were not great literature, they were just all kinds of crazy series that were real popular at that time.

Q:

It sounds as though the influences were more American than Jewish and immigrant.

Foner:

Let me try to remember the Jewish influence. We went to haida.

Q:

What's that?

Foner:

A Jewish school. Mr. Greenhouse had a school, like a brownstone on the block that was set up with benches, and we went after school there. But we went there because our parents said we should go. I, at any rate, was never serious about it. It was a fun kind of thing that you went to and wanted to get out of so you could go do your own thing. We never did anything that I really absorbed out of it. Bar mitzvah, for example, my brothers’ bar mitzvah was a very big deal, and it was done in conjunction with the people next door because it was a double-header. We had relatives in and the people next door turned over their place, and I remember Jack made his speech in one, then they crossed over. They were regarded as very smart, and it may be that that gave me a sense of inadequacy in comparison. Particularly I remember going to school, I'd come in for the first time and they said, “Are you --”

And you said, “Yes.,” And they sort of expected great things for you, which you couldn't deliver.

Henry, who came four years later, had physical problems. At that time it was defined as one leg was shorter than the other, and he used to go to doctors and, I remember, to Eneslow for special shoes. I went there two years ago.

Q:

What's Eneslow?





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