Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Latest articles

  • The church’s role in community

    The anti-establishmentarian in blogger Hoosier Reborn questioned the church trend of creating community. I wanted to expand on a comment I left on his post. North Liberty Christian Church was founded in Marion County, Indiana, in 1839. I’m told it’s the third oldest church in what is now Indianapolis. I found this 1855 plat map…

  • Mamunia

    When life rains on you, let it, because you will surely grow.

  • Roadside flowers

    I’ve been spending a few minutes each morning in a devotional called God Calling. Two British women in the 1930s wrote down comforting and encouraging messages they believe God gave them as they faced great difficulties in their lives. One of the book’s major themes is finding joy, which all three of my devoted readers…

  • Love paves the way

    I once heard a recovered alcoholic tell his story. He was living in a shed, drinking every dollar he scrounged, and life did not look to be getting any better. He showed up at an AA clubhouse one day. “I’m not an alcoholic,” he told the man behind the counter. “I just want to sit…

  • Beretta subculture

    I write about my faith, my personal growth, and my roadgeekery hoping that my posts will resonate with you and that you will leave comments that share your experiences. Last July I wrote a post called “What’s the use?” about enjoying what God has given us. I told the story of my first brand new…

  • No fallow season

    Wer rastet, rostet! – German saying (Whoever rests, rusts!) The Germans may be industrious, but we Americans are driven. Just before Christmas I read a Texas preacher’s blog entry in which he quoted an author’s observation of how Americans like to push themselves past burnout and then spend a weekend on the couch in a…

  • 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…