Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Latest articles

  • Pleasant View, on the Michigan Road

    Southeast of Indianapolis, about 3½ miles of a five-mile stretch of I-74 were built on top of the Michigan Road. Within those five miles, I-74 swings slightly west, allowing 1½ miles of the Michigan Road to reappear. In the middle of that segment is the tiny unincorporated town of Pleasant View. If you look carefully as…

  • A place to start again

    Buying a house felt like the last step in reaching a new normal after my divorce. Looking forward to some permanence after three years of transience, I started looking at houses as soon as I was financially able. I wanted to live near my children, in their school district if I could. We had made…

  • Vintage TV: The Price is Right ticket plug

    As a kid, I filled large portions of my summers watching game shows, which ruled the morning daytime airwaves in the 1970s. I still love game shows. If I had cable, I’d probably fill large portions of my evenings in front of GSN watching classic reruns. GSN condenses those reruns a bit so they can…

  • One-two punch

    After five hours of hard rain during an unusually wet spring, a foot of water stood in my crawl space. I took the day off last Monday, borrowed a portable pump, and commenced Operation Dryout. It rained hard Tuesday. Having learned much from Monday’s underground combat, I needed only Wednesday morning to retake the hill.  Back at work Wednesday afternoon,…

  • Things guaranteed to make me smile

    What never fails to make you smile? Here are my top five. 5. An abandoned road. 4. A twisty road I have all to myself. 3. A Studebaker. 2. A steel truss bridge. 1. A dog’s head poked out of a moving car’s window, its ears flying in the breeze. If you’ve been reading my…

  • Storm damage

    Jesus said to the Two Listeners: Turn out all thoughts of doubt and of trouble. Never tolerate them for one second. Bar the windows and doors of your souls against them as you would bar your home against a thief who would steal in to take your treasures. What greater treasures can you have than…

  • Vintage TV: Donahue

    In the 1970s, the Phil Donahue Show was appointment television for my mom. She started watching it on cable from WGN in Chicago and then on a local station when it became syndicated. She called it one of the few intelligent programs on TV, at least until Donahue succumbed to booking unicycling transvestites on speed and other “warped…

  • Everything you need

    Most of my life I thought I had to make myself right before I could approach God. I had to stop swearing, stop having sex with my girlfriend, stop lying to cover up things I didn’t want to admit, and stop eating entire large pizzas for comfort when I was feeling blue. I needed to…

  • The Pintomobile

    What has been your favorite car, and why? In the summer of 1986 my Aunt Betty offered me a job driving (and writing a payroll application) for the courier service she owned. I told her I’d love to take the job but her office wasn’t on a bus line so I couldn’t get to work.…

  • Vintage TV: 1978 NBC Nightly News theme

    In the 1970s and 1980s, if my parents were watching the news, you could lay down good money that it was on NBC. If we were watching CBS or ABC and they broke in with a special report, Dad changed the channel so they could see it on NBC. I never knew why. For years,…

  • Scenes from the Michigan Road in southern Indiana

    I made my second visit to the Michigan Road in southern Indiana on Saturday. I returned to Napoleon, where I finished last time, and drove north from there. It was another great trip, full of sunshine and sights. It was cool, so I rolled the windows down and enjoyed the breeze. My dogs napped in…

  • Argus C3 Match-Matic

    It’s been months since I bought an old camera. I’ve been looking at Argus C3s on eBay for months, looking for the right one. Argus cranked out millions of C3s from 1939 to 1966, and this rugged and relatively inexpensive camera is credited with almost single-handedly popularizing the 35mm film format in the United States.…