Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Tag: family

  • Postwar memories on Kodachrome

    I scanned in a giant cache of Kodachromes that belong to my wife’s mother. They’re from the late 1940s and early 1950s, and boy do the colors still pop. Check some of them out here!

  • The sounds of Christmas

    Bing Crosby and Johnny Mathis form the core of my family’s Christmas music. It’s been that way for three generations now!

  • single frame: Garrett, bored

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  • single frame: Garrett, down the hall

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  • Goodbye, Rick, sort of

    Down the Road is on hiatus. New posts resume on Monday! Here’s one last rerun, one that’s special to me. I’m happy to run it again because the first time around (July of 2008) this blog was barely a year old and had few readers. My brother and I didn’t see eye to eye on…

  • A ring and a date

    We’re getting married two months from today! We’re keeping it simple. We’re inviting just immediate family: our parents, our brothers and sisters, our children, and all of their spouses. That’s still a lot of people — Margaret is seventh of eight children, and between us we have seven children! We’re having a small, short, simple…

  • Making traditions up as you go

    A rerun from Nov. 2011, with an update at the end. It’s my ex-wife’s turn to enjoy Thanksgiving with our sons, so I’ll be home alone tonight. Don’t weep for me ā€“ we had the family, the fine china, the turkey, and the post-dinner coma last Saturday. When I was small, we always had Thanksgiving…

  • Grandpa and me

    I’m retelling this story from Sept. 2012 because I alluded to it on Monday and I need time to build up a backlog of posts. I love this story and I hope you do too. This is probably my favorite photograph of all time. Meet my grandfather, who is holding me shortly after my birth…

  • Mom Grey on my mind

    Please enjoy this story again, which I first told 11 October 2010. Everyone in the family called her Mom. She was my father’s father’s mother, my great grandmother, and her time overlapped mine by a handful of years. Filet-O-Fish sandwiches will always make me think of her. She was born in the West Virginia hills…

  • Spring break at Mammoth Cave

    Scenes from inside Mammoth Cave.

  • 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. Iā€™m sure my grin was plenty goofy as I watched them go. My older son was absolutely thrilled to get…

  • Everyday life, half a world away

    I’ve written at length this week about the big things that affected me in Germany. I’ve saved the best for last: the everyday family life I enjoyed. Ulrich (OOL-rick) and Irene (ee-RAY-nuh) were my host parents, and Peter (PAY-ter) and Ulrike (ool-REE-kuh) my teenaged host brother and sister. They lived what I see now was…