It began as a joke 51 years ago.
But it became a chronology of two lives, marking births and deaths, job promotions and retirements, vacations and relocations.All inside one travel-weary Christmas card.
It started in 1946. That's when Harry Berner, who lives in Sun City, Ariz., sent the card from Jackson, Minn., to a buddy in Korea.
The buddy signed it and sent it back.
"We were always trying to get one up on the other," explained Gordon Vacura, 78, a sometimes Phoenix winter visitor from Bella Vista, Ark.
"This is what happens when you're a couple of cheapskates."
And so it's continued for more than 50 years.
Berner, an 83-year-old retired banker, and Vacura, a retired Army colonel, don't really talk much during the year. Some years, there is just the card. It must be a guy thing.
The card is so special, the two have sent it registered mail.
"We registered it when it was getting up in years," Berner said. "It was valuable to him and it was valuable to me."
This year, Vacura decided to save his buddy the postage and collect the Christmas card in person. He visited Berner earlier this week to do just that.
The two have been buddies since grade school in Jackson, Minn.
They were inseparable in high school, hopping in the car to drive 20 miles to the Okoboji resort, where they paid a dime to listen to great bands led by people such as Benny Goodman, and dance with none other than Donna Reed, who visited the summer resort before she ever became one of television's favorite moms.
But Vacura went away to veterinary school, then on to a 30-year Army career.
"When he was in Jackson and I'd come home for visit, then we'd be together every day, even when Harry was married," Vacura said.
The visits lessened as the two grew older and life got busier. Berner stayed in Jackson to work 40 years at the family bank.
The card has traveled more than a million miles, Berner figures, having been sent to Japan and Yugoslavia, where Vacura was stationed in the Army, then all over America when his buddy moved back to the United States.
On the cover of the tattered card is a black-and-white drawing of a Scottie dog, wrapped present in paw, standing at a front door adorned with a big red bow.
The handwriting is small. Some years it's a word or two; other years, it's as much as two paragraphs.
They started writing under the Christmas greeting, but soon moved to the back of the card, then the inside-facing page. When they ran out of room there, they unfolded it to the inside portion, scribbling a few lines each year. When that space was covered, they started writing on small note card-size pieces of paper they taped to the inside.
In 1948, Vacura sent a picture of the two of them and a third buddy taken in a photo booth at Okoboji some years earlier, long before either was married or Vacura went into the service.
"We added a house and baby this year," Berner wrote in 1952.