No doubt there will be loads of similar stories in about 25 years, but for now these five chaps from Santa Barbara High School can take the plaudits.

They’ve been taking the same photo in the same pose on the same cabin bench every five years for the past 35 years, in a remote location at Copco Lake on the California-Oregon border.

Props to John “Wedge” Wardlaw, Mark Rumer-Cleary, Dallas Burney, John Molony and John Dickson for pulling this one off, which has made them internet sensations.

So that picture up top is the cropped picture from 1982, the year they first snapped the picture, but I’ll put it below in its entirety too:

1982:

1987:

1992:

1997:

2002:

2007:

2012:

2017:

CNN caught up with the crew on the 35th anniversary of the snap, and they ran through the story of their endearing friendship:

Wardlaw, 54, and Dickson formed a friendship in middle school, out of tragedy.

As the Wardlaw family attended “Star Wars” in downtown Santa Barbara, California, on July 26, 1977, the Sycamore Fire exploded in the foothills when a kite became entangled in power lines. The ferocious blaze burned down 250 homes, including Wardlaw’s house.

“We rented a house from the Dickson family, right next door to them,” Wardlaw said. “John and I became friends.”

…The two became friends with the others in high school. The Super 8 movies “kept us out of teenage trouble,” said Burney, 54. “Even though many of us moved on to college, or the US Air Force in my case, we always continued to find time to do the movies.”

Rumer-Cleary, 53, said the friends have remained tight despite a few spats here and there.

“Other than two guys being irritated with each other for three months a little after high school, it was nothing lasting,” Rumer-Cleary said.

And how the photos came to be:

Their photo streak started in 1982 when the friends, who were about 19, headed to the cabin that Wardlaw’s grandpa built and took their first photo.

Among the rules that developed out of that first photo: Molony holds a glass in his right hand and Rumer must have a hat in his lap. Despite lurching into their 50s, when bellies can bulge, the men decided to take this year’s photo shirtless for the first time in 30 years.

Many of them have been working out to avoid being fat shamed, but not Rumer-Cleary…

Just like the first trip, they still crank up the stereo and listen to heavy doses of Rush and Pink Floyd.

“During that first trip I don’t think any of us drank alcohol the whole time, except one thing,” Wardlaw remembered.

“My grandpa liked bourbon and after he died in 1976 there was and still is an Ezra Brooks 1969 Arkansas Razorback decanter that still had a little whiskey left. Some of us passed it around and took some sips.”

In honor [sic] of Grandpa, 14 Razorback decanters now decorate the cabin. Like the decanter, grandpa passed along a love of the lake and the cabin.

Get crunked for Grandpa, y’all.

Long may all five friends continue the tradition.

[source:cnn]