Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Tag: schools

  • Abandoned school near Middlefork, Indiana on the Michigan Road

    Photographs that show an abandoned schoolhouse progressively deteriorating.

  • single frame: James Monroe School

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  • The incredibly sticky sense of place

    The land on which my home stands was farmland not 20 years ago. It’s typical: thanks to sprawl, many American neighborhoods occupy land that produced crops sometime within the last hundred years. In my town, a suburb of Indianapolis, neighboring subdivisions and shopping centers are brand new. I remember well the farmland that was there…

  • Historical structures on the Michigan Road in northwest Indianapolis

    Photographs from 2008-2010 and 2017 of several older homes and structures on the Michigan Road in northwest Indianapolis. They’ve changed so little!

  • Captured: On the schoolhouse steps

    I’ve been looking through old photographs as I’ve thought about a subject for the photo book I’d like to produce. Reviewing photos from my Pentax KM, I found this 2013 photo of my dad. I used a 55mm f/1.8 SMC Pentax lens and Kodak TMax 400 film — which I mistakenly shot at 100. Fortunately, Photoshop rescued…

  • Captured: School arch

    This arch, of which I’ve written before, once admitted students to one of the oldest schools in Indianapolis. Students have been educated at this site on the Michigan Road in northwest Marion County, Indiana, since 1837. The building formerly attached to this arch was built in about 1916 and razed in 1983. The school that stands on this…

  • Balloon Day

    The balloons filled the air, hundreds and hundreds of them squirming around each other in the wind. The sky turned red, yellow, blue, and green as they raced away. A cross current soon caught them, drawing them across the sky on their way to who knows where. Six hundred children gathered on the school’s back…

  • 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…

  • The Arch at Crooked Creek School

    Thanks to John Roberts – a long-dead one, not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court – the school around the corner from my house has been there since 1837. Not in its original building, of course. John owned some land in what was then rural northwest Marion County, along the brand-new Michigan Road where it crossed…

  • Schools driven by standardized tests take all joy out of learning

    I was in the third grade when Indiana’s standardized math and reading test, the ISTEP, was introduced in public schools. I remember parents expressing fears that these tests would be used to drive what was taught and to rate teachers and schools. I remember school officials swearing up one side and down the other that…

  • Balloon Day

    The balloons filled the air, hundreds and hundreds of them squirming around each other in the wind. The sky turned red, yellow, blue, and green as they raced away. A cross current soon caught them, drawing them across the sky on their way to who knows where. Six hundred children gathered on the school’s back…

  • I wouldn’t be a writer were it not for the computer

    Much hullabaloo was made in June when the Indiana Department of Education sent a memo to schools that made teaching cursive handwriting optional and emphasized teaching keyboarding skills. The decision touched a statewide nerve, and the responses were binary: hands were wrung, or relief was sighed. All of my sons, I’m sure, are in the…