Part of an interview with Daryl Alterwitz on November 8, 2014. In this clip, Alterwitz describes moving to Las Vegas as a teenager with his family, and meeting his good friend Robert Engel at Valley High School.
Daryl Alterwitz oral history interview, 2014 November 08. OH-02180. [Audio recording]. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada. http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/d18p5xw2x
English
Coming to Las Vegas was kind of a weird thing for me because I grew up in jeans and sneakers and T shirts and not much else. But when I moved here I was taken aback because everyone seemed to be taking seriously disco fever or whatever that Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta [look]. You mean the unbuttoned shirts and the chains and all that? Oh, yeah, like the silk shirts or Dacron shirts or whatever that artificial silk was, with these tight bell-bottom slacks and high boots. Leaving Gary, Indiana and Jackson Five -- I actually had the same teacher; I wasn't in the same class as Michael Jackson, but we shared Thelma Dora Finkledye as a fourth grade teacher. I thought we were leaving that behind us. It was disorienting to move when you're thirteen and going to a new high school. There was like twenty five hundred, eighteen hundred people at Valley High School, which at that time was one of the better high schools. I never imagined it would be so immense. I was taken back, a little withdrawn, but I found my way and made friends. One of the first friends I made was Robert Engel, a Jewish boy. We're still close friends. He went to a different high school, but we stayed friends throughout high school and went to the same college.