Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Tag: children

single frame: Riding the carousel dragon

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17 May 2018
“You are five times the father I ever was,” my dad said to me

I wanted to live with my sons every day of their childhoods, but the divorce ended that for good. I reflect here on how I grieve that loss even now that my sons are grown up.

16 March 2018
single frame: Salvation Army donation

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27 June 2017
Memories lost, memories created, memories kept

I don’t dwell much on memories of my first marriage, which was destructive to all of us. But a few photographs of me with my sons there remind me that there were good times. And then after the divorce, I focused on building good memories.

5 June 2017
It’ll be stronger than it was before it broke

A story of a pivotal moment in my relationship with my youngest son. A chance to teach character, a chance to show grace.

24 April 2017
Monopoly money

How my son Garrett taught me a lesson in coping with loss.

24 April 2017
Adjusting to the changes as court-ordered parenting time ends

On my youngest son turning 18 and the changes this brings in both of our lives.

24 April 2017
Online privacy for children and why you’ve never seen photos of my sons here

It wasn’t some higher motive that has kept me from posting photos of my children online, at least at first. It was their mom, who was afraid of online predators. Overafraid, if you ask me. Sharing photos of my sons playing at the park or blowing out their birthday candles was never going to invite…

28 September 2016
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
Vintage TV: Garfield Goose and Frazier Thomas

Even in the 1970s, children’s television could be frenetic. Frazier Thomas and his friend, puppet Garfield Goose, were the gentle antidote. A pleasant morning breeze upon the children’s TV landscape, Garfield Goose and Friends aired each weekday at 8 AM on WGN-TV in Chicago. The premise was that Garfield Goose thought he was the king of the…

2 May 2016
Vintage TV: Freakies

It was a sugar-sweetened cereal for kids. But the cartoony characters that advertised them connected with young viewers in new way, at least for the early 1970s. My mom was not usually a sucker for TV commercials aimed at kids, but she fell hook, line, and sinker for the Freakies. And so we ate Freakies until…

26 October 2015