Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Tag: childhood

The sad state of my childhood home

The house I grew up in looks like hell.

16 June 2022
Summer’s denouement

A story of autumn’s coming, in 1970s Indiana.

6 September 2021
Then there was the time we were visited by Child Protective Services

A sad but true story.

29 March 2021
Brant’s and South Bend’s Miami Village

A memory of Brant’s, a five-and-dime store, part of Miami Village on the south side of South Bend, Indiana.

26 June 2020
Summer’s denouement

Memoir of my 1970s kidhood, squeezing out the last drops of summer before school started.

2 September 2019
Dad was always there

A father’s very presence in his child’s life can create lasting security. My dad was a hard man and he left me with some issues I had to work out as an adult — but his steady presence in my life has always served me well.

14 March 2018
I like cameras

In this rerun of a post from March, 2007, I tell the story of how I built my first camera collection.

9 February 2018
On the corner of Erskine and Woodside, 1976-1985

Posting about my childhood neighborhood the other day led me to look through my photo archive for good images around my house when I lived there in the 1970s and 1980s.

27 October 2017
My first roll of film

Down the Road is on hiatus, returning Monday, 26 September. I’m rerunning old posts in the meantime. When my grandmother gave me a quarter to buy the old Kodak Brownie Starmite II at a garage sale, I don’t think either of us could have predicted that it would spark a lifelong love of cameras, which…

7 September 2016
Summer’s denouement

Down the Road is on hiatus, returning Monday, 26 September. I’m rerunning old posts in the meantime. I’ve run this one many times; it’s one of my favorites. During my 1970s kidhood when schools started after Labor Day as God intended, my mid-August birthday always meant summer was beginning to end. By then, the afternoon sun…

6 September 2016
On Rabbit Hill

It’s high time I retold this story that I first told in 2010. My childhood neighborhood was packed tightly along steep, narrow streets with tiny, thinly built lookalike two- and three-bedroom houses. These weren’t anybody’s dream homes; it was optimistic to call them modest. But they were attractive to working families getting their start. I…

2 October 2015
Fatherhood changes when teenagers are almost ready to launch

I was so happy and proud for my sons on the days they started Kindergarten. I could feel them growing up as they boarded the school bus, their hands on the rail and their superhero backpacks hanging low. I’m sure my grin was plenty goofy as I watched them go. My older son was absolutely thrilled to get…

5 September 2014