Happy Birthday, Traveling Man!

The standard birthday collage (here) has been put on the shelf this year; it will return in 2018, perhaps even with a new picture or two (perhaps). This year’s birthday theme is centered around all of the places that I can recall Dad living over the course of his eighty-four years, all located and measured out in the GoogleMap below.

The dominant color of this map is blue—the color of water. How appropriate for Carl Buller, since water has been a recurring motif throughout his life. 

On 11 December 1933, for example, Carl was born on the banks (sort of) of the West Fork of the Big Blue River; at least the trees lining the river were visible from the farmhouse. Later in life, first as a farmer and then as a business owner, irrigation water played a vital role in growing both crops and Henderson Irrigation. Some years later Carl flew over the ocean a number of times as he visited and then lived in Brazil (Recife and its surroundings), where he met and married Suely and they began a family together. When they finally moved back to the States, their first few homes were not near water (although I believe several of them had pools!), but in time they settled in Stow, Ohio, twenty-five miles south of Lake Erie, and now they live in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, roughly a mile from the shore of Lake Michigan.

What is more impressive than the water motif is the total miles that Dad has traveled throughout the course of his life. Not counting trips back and forth across the country and to other countries, only taking into account the distances between the various places he has lived, he has traversed 11,665 miles. To put that into perspective, it is roughly twice the distance Peter D and family journeyed from Molotschna colony to Henderson, Nebraska. I guess some things never change with Bullers.

At any rate, Happy Birthday, Traveling Dad! Wishing you many miles and many more years on your life-long journey!