Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Latest articles

  • 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…

  • A very important Plymouth

    I’m a bit of a car nut. Last week I was surfing around Dailymotion looking at old TV spots for cars and found this one for what looked to me like a 1966 Plymouth Fury, but was called the Plymouth VIP instead. I’d never heard of the model, which surprised me, because I’m pretty on…

  • Shopping in the suburbs

    I’ve always lived in cities. I groove on grids of streets with curbs and sidewalks. So when I moved to Indianapolis, I didn’t consider living in the suburbs for a minute. But to get a better school system, I did buy an older home in the old suburbs outside the old city limits. (The city…

  • Find joy where life is

    In the few months before I went on the mission trip to Mexico last fall I started a new job, my divorce became final, and I left a one-room apartment and rented a five-bedroom house. I grieved my marriage (and tried to be a good dad to my sons as they grieved the changes in…

  • Adventures to come

    I watch 6News Good Morning Indiana while I get ready on work mornings. Weather guesser Paul Poteet has a sharp, fast wit, and I can usually use a laugh at 5:30 in the morning. (I would have killed for Paul’s wit when I did radio years ago.) I think I’ve left more comments on Good…

  • On the small screen

    I debuted on TV in 1976, back when stay-at-home moms were still called homemakers. There were enough of them then that locally produced homemaker shows aired in the morning on stations across the country. A woman named Dorothy Frisk hosted South Bend’s homemaker show, The Dorothy Frisk Show, live each weekday on WSBT-TV. It was…

  • The National Road in Illinois

    A long trip down the National Road in Illinois, with plenty of old-alignment goodness. They built a new road and left the old one behind, right alongside!