Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Latest articles

  • Best of DTR: Love paves the way

    If you’ve been following my blog lately you know that my church just sold its building and is now worshiping in rented space. We’ve been seeking God’s guidance on how he wants us to reach out. As a church, we tend to want to reach out in churchy ways that translate to “get ’em in…

  • The time capsule

    We found a time capsule in our church building’s cornerstone. See what it contains!

  • Renewing a 170-year heritage

    We sought God’s leading for our dying church. The path he put us on led us away from our home of 170 years, but it unified us behind him after years of strife.

  • Captured: Rose-Hulman spring morning

    As a boy, summer was my favorite season, but as I grew up spring began to overtake it. I remember well the day that spring clinched the top spot. It was the day before I took this photograph, one May morning in 1987. These were my college days, and this was the view from my…

  • GE PR-1 Exposure Meter

    I’ll bet that when you press your camera’s button, you get a crisp photograph. I’ll bet you take it for granted. There was a time when photographers had to actually know something about exposure to get a good shot. Except on cheap cameras, which fixed exposure for passable photos under most conditions, photographers had to…

  • Captured: Felke Florist

    If you’ve never been to Plymouth, put it on your list; it is a charming small Indiana city. I came to appreciate it on my many passes through as I explored the Michigan Road in 2008. Its intact old downtown is filled with viable local shops; well-cared-for homes dating to the mid-1800s line the Michigan Road…

  • Scenes from the National Road in 1920

    Long about March I’ve been cooped up so long that I start to itch for my first spring road trip. The guys over at the American Road forum have been talking about the National Road a lot lately. One fellow there has started an ambitious online project to capture the road’s history. It has me…

  • Captured: Main Street, South Bend

    You can still find many rumbly brick streets in the old parts of South Bend. This lonely block of Main Street connects Leeper Park to Memorial Hospital. It once ran south into downtown, but the hospital long ago oozed across the road. Hospitals have a way of doing that. My brother once lived on this…

  • Vintage TV: Bewitched

    It’s easy to like Bewitched. The show’s great appeal was driven by its star, Elizabeth Montgomery, and bolstered by its excellent cast of quirky supporting characters. But you knew that already. The show has endured in reruns for 46 years; unless you’ve lived under a rock, you’ve seen it. (If you’ve just come out from…

  • February snows

    I complain about Indiana winters, but that’s because during my 1970s and 1980s South Bend kidhood I shoveled enough snow to last a lifetime and it soured me on the whole season. Lake Michigan being only 20 miles away, lake-effect snow squalls dump more than 80 inches of snow on the city in an average…

  • Family cars

    Every dad ends up buying a family car sooner or later, but I sure didn’t enjoy mine. Read why.

  • The best rested guy in town

    I’ve written before about how I’m not much of a sports fan. I don’t get sports, really. Last night, Super Bowl Sunday, I went to bed at 10 p.m. I’ll bet I was one of a handful of people sleeping here in Indianapolis given that the hometown team, the Colts, played. Unfortunately, it didn’t go…