They call him "Books" Dalton

Actually, no, no one did.

Discussing the old photos of the early days of Southdale, the first mall:

I have the photo on my phone because I carry around the decades in digital form, the whole family history in my back pocket, and one of the things I have stored in bits and bytes is the reminder that I first came here as a child, over 60 years ago. Back when you rented your phone and it had a dial and it was stuck on the wall like a remora.

Removed for length and irrelevance. But it’s true: I have a lot of family history on my phone. It’s a consequence of having a well-ordered photo archive. The WSJ recently did a piece about finding all your pictures and getting them in order, and while I can’t remember the specifics, I suspect few people rolled up their sleeves and began the task. It’s too daunting. Where are the pictures? On the phone, on thumb drives, in email attachments, stuck on old tiny plastic cards that were once an absolute miracle but now are irritating little pieces of plastic flotsam you can’t quite toss even though you lost the adaptor dongle? And then there’s the boxes of photos you never open, waiting to be scanned. It’s too much.