My KitchenSmith by Bella 2 Slice Toaster — or “Grille-Pain A Fentes,” if you prefer to butcher the French language, as I did throughout college — comes with 22 pages of instructions, or manuel d’instructions. Thank goodness I passed on the four-slice toaster.

This caution came on page 3: “A person who has not read and understood all operating, toasting, and safety instructions is not qualified to operate this appliance.” So it speaks to qualifications.

That set off this voice in my head: “For crying out loud, plug it in,” which I did. Later, I burned my thumb extracting the sliced bagels.

If I have no patience for reading instruction manuals, I have endless fascination for perusing almanacs. My most recent acquisition, “Texas Almanac 2018-2019,” published by the (marvelous) Texas State Historical Association, promises unceasing pleasure.

I snagged it by membership in the association, which I acquired soon after moving to Greater Port Arthur in December. Smart on my part.

I’d forsaken my longstanding Louisiana Historical Association membership after crossing the Sabine — I still feel guilty, but how many associations can you afford? — and the Texas Almanac arrived soon after.

“Fortunately, inside this edition of the Almanac are all the facts and figures you could want to know about our beloved Lone Star State.” Greg Abbott wrote that on page 9 so I’ll take it as gospel.

Better still, Elizabeth Cruce Alverez, the editor, a woman with a Texas-size smile, included her mugshot with a backdrop of the Great American Eclipse taken last Aug. 21. How’s that for cool? If I’m marooned with strangers at a luncheon table someday, I hope Ms. Alverez takes the empty seat next to me. (There’s always an empty seat, sometimes two, next to me. How come?)

And how are these for Almanac facts:

• There are more Catholics (4,673,500) than Baptists (4,590,143) in Texas. At least that was the case in 2010, the latest figures used. I wouldn’t have guessed that but I found it in the “Religious adherents” section on page 593. (Heads up to all faiths included in the list: There were 15,042,106 “unclaimed” Texans noted.)
• More people in Texas follow the Hindu (60,725) and Buddhist (66,116) faiths than Judaism (60,645) — again, according to 2010 numbers.
• The Port of Port Arthur handled more tonnage than the ports in Freeport and Galveston combined in 2015, latest year available. Jes’ saying.
• The newspaper section starts on page 666, the Mark of the Beast. Can’t make that up. And don’t tweet that out.
• Only three Americans have won the Van Cliburn Piano Competition in Fort Worth since it was established in 1962 to honor Cliburn, the Texan who won the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958. (Shreveport, where Cliburn was born, still claims him for Louisiana.) And if you can access YouTube, you can catch him performing in Moscow 60 years ago. It’s spectacular.
• There were 177,230 marriages, 71,988 divorces in Texas in 2014. The divorce rate is 2.7, trailing the U.S. divorce rate of 3.2 per thousand people. It could be worse — and was — in 1981 and 1985, when divorces cleared 100,000 in Texas.
• Closer to home, 1,148 people live in China (west of Beaumont), 580 live in Nome (west of China).

You could look it up. I did, under a single-bulb reading light in the sanctuary of my third-floor walk-up. You could while away the hours with this volume and not waste time doing so.

The flexbound volume is distributed by Texas A&M University Press and costs $29.95, less than a steak at some joints. And it gives you more to chew on.

 

Ken Stickney is editor of the Port Arthur News.