Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Latest articles

  • The National Road revisited

    “I know!” someone at the highway maintenance barn exclaimed. “Let’s get drunk and go stripe some road!” This and many other adventures, including an abandoned bridge, 10 miles of abandoned brick highway, and an 1830 stone arch bridge still carrying traffic, in my report on the Indiana and Illinois National Road, Revisited.

  • Bursting the nostalgia bubble

    How visiting a fellow who lived his whole life on US 40 changed my view of the old roads.

  • Wrongly imprisoned

    I can think of some times when something happened to me that was neither right nor fair, and all I could do was suffer through it. Perhaps you’ve been there, too, and know the anger and grief injustice brings. In Terre Haute yesterday, David Scott was freed after spending 23 years in prison for a…

  • Blizzard of ’78

    Thirty years ago yesterday the TV weatherman warned of a coming blizzard. By afternoon thirty years ago today, I sat in school watching a wall of white through the window as the storm moved in. School let out early. I leaned hard against the wicked cold winds, stinging snow against my face, as I walked the…

  • Exploring Old US 31 in Indiana

    Taking a drive down old US 31 in Indiana from the Michigan line to Indianapoils, and exploring all the old alignments along the way.

  • I don’t get sports

    Even though I was unathletic, sometimes I’d play vacant-lot sports with the neighborhood boys. I was marginally competent as a goalie in soccer and on defense in football, the latter largely because I was a little bigger than the other kids. Otherwise, I couldn’t catch, I couldn’t hit, and I threw so badly that the…

  • A cappella

    Ten years ago my wife and I visited a little Church of Christ in a plain building that stood on an empty highway in a rural corner of the city. The warm and friendly members eagerly accepted us as guests. The service began simply with a welcome and a prayer. Then a man walked to…

  • Honoring my inner longhair

    When I was a teenager, I kept my hair very short. Mil spec. People sometimes asked if I was in ROTC. Then in college I developed a used-record habit that Harold, my supplier at Headstone Friends, was happy to support. I skipped haircuts to buy more records. At first, when I’d go home on break…

  • Holiday lights along the Michigan Road

    After a nice Thanksgiving in South Bend, I drove home Friday evening. I always start my trip on US 31, but I like to exit at Rochester and follow the old Dixie Highway and Michigan Road back to Indianapolis. The old road follows State Road 25 to Logansport and exits on old State Road 29,…

  • A kink in the National Road

    Last year I wrote on my Roads pages about a trip I took with a friend down US 40 and the National Road across western Indiana. We enjoyed finding forgotten and sometimes abandoned segments of the road’s original alignment. Since then, thanks to the gang at the American Road forum, I’ve discovered the Automobile Blue…

  • School speed limits

    This is where I went to elementary school. James Monroe School, built in 1931, was probably a model of modern school buildings in its day. Its slate roof and copper gutters had to cost a fortune. It was built anticipating growth on South Bend’s south side. I once saw a 1941 photograph of a class…

  • The existentialism of the Coyote

    I read several webcomics every day and one of them is xkcd by Randall Munroe. I like its engineering/math/geek bent, imagine that. Last Friday, it intersected neatly with classic animation space, another favorite place of mine, and asserted that an engineer with all the supplies at the old Coyote’s disposal could have caught that Road…