Some members of my family are data driven: we have a weird need to know how far, how many times, how often, how much. Some of us keep spreadsheets to track ridiculous statistics. Others of us know that their rate of travel shooting a Route 66 photo project is 17.8 miles per hour.

We are the Keepers of the Statistics.

Anyway, that is how we know beyond a doubt that this pot has fried 110 turkeys since 2000: there’s data to tell us.

We know we’re dorks. We don’t care. And even it we did care, I don’t think it would be possible for us to abandon our weird ways. My dad, an engineer to the last molecule in is body, was a Collector of Data. He kept an old-style surveyor’s notebook in his car and would carefully note the car’s gas mileage at every fill up. He also kept scrupulous travel journals, the last page always containing a summary of miles traveled, total expenses, and the per-day averages of both. See? We can’t help it.

Plano, Texas
photographed 11.27.2025