Columns

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to be a judge at a series of debates at West Las Vegas High School. What I experienced was both frustrating and inspiring.

First, the frustration. I found it difficult to sit there without speaking up about the issues under debate. The questions posed were relevant and timely and the wannabe teacher in me wanted to jump into the fray. But I maintained my role and kept quiet — not such an easy thing to do for an inky pundit like me.

The most well known of the early Jewish settlers of Las Vegas was Charles Ilfeld, who came here in 1867, when he was only 20. He had arrived in Santa Fe two years earlier, emigrating from Homburg vor der Hohe, a town in Germany near Frankfurt, then part of the Prussian Empire. According to Ilfeld family history, Charles arrived in Santa Fe with only $5 in his pocket.      

“Please leave the humor to me.” I’ve used that line many times, especially toward my brother-in-law, Jeff Romero, a lawyer  who used to be the district attorney in Albuquerque.

He’d start in with lawyer jokes (yes, lawyers know them all; they hear them, spread them, laugh at them and feel unloved if someone fails to tell a lawyer joke in their presence).

One thing about Jeff, a man who has made quite a good living, was his reluctance to buy new stuff.

When introducing the most recent articles in this column, we noted that between annexation in 1846 and the arrival of the railroad in 1879, there were three transformative developments in Las Vegas. We have related two of them, the Americanization of the Old Town Plaza and the emergence of the Romero dynasty.