Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Tag: childhood

  • On Erskine Boulevard

    My post last week about my childhood neighborhood made me want to update and rerun this 2010 post in which I tour the street I grew up on.  Take a walk with me along the street where I grew up. In 1976, my family moved from the cookie-cutter prefab neighborhood that we called Rabbit Hill to a larger, nicer home…

  • The incredibly sticky sense of place

    If you’ve lived in one place for a long time, think back on how much the area has changed. Think especially of farmland that now boasts subdivisions or office parks. Don’t we marvel at the sprawl? Don’t we rail at how a long stretch of lonely road turned into a string of maddening stoplights? Don’t…

  • Summer’s denouement

    This post on another blog I follow reminded me of this piece I wrote in 2008. The photos are from my first roll of film, shot in August of 1976, of the children I wrote about here. It seems appropriate to re-run this on Labor Day; you’ll see why as you read it. During my…

  • Why I collect cameras

    From a very young age I’ve been fascinated with anything that has buttons or knobs. I love to figure out how things work. The summer I turned 9, my brother and I took our first annual summer trip to visit our grandparents at the little Michigan lake to which they had retired. We spent a…

  • Summer’s denouement

    Longtime readers may remember this post from three years ago. I’m very much feeling the end-of-summer blues this year and this explains the roots of my affliction. I’ve updated this post a little to keep current with the times. During my 1970s kidhood when schools started after Labor Day as God intended, my mid-August birthday…

  • Vintage TV: Winky Dink and You

    He was the star of what is sometimes called the first interactive video game. A whole generation of children loved following his weekly antics. His name was Winky Dink, and he was anything but rinky dink. He was before my time, though. I grew up watching 1970s Chicago kids’ TV – BJ and the Dirty Dragon,…

  • Rabbit Hill today

    Not long ago, I returned to Rabbit Hill with my brother and his best friend Mike. We were in town to attend an open house at the elementary school we all attended, which had just completed a major renovation. Mike suggested we start by walking back to Rabbit Hill and then walking the three quarters…

  • On Rabbit Hill

    Looking back at my working-class childhood neighborhood. With 31 other children on our street, there was always someone to play with!

  • On the Dummy Line

    What fun songs do you remember singing as a child? Preacher Mike’s blog this morning quoted a line from an old song about trains that I learned in the second grade but haven’t thought about in years. The teacher gathered our class around the piano every day and we sang songs from a set of discarded songbooks that…

  • Summer’s denouement

    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 was at its hottest and most intense, the annual August dry spell began to toughen and dry spring’s tender greenery, and the street lights switched on earlier to…