Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Since 2007

Tag: South Bend Indiana

  • Best of DTR: Brushes with greatness

    When I published the first version of this post in April, 2007, the blog was new and got maybe five hits a day. I get, gosh, a whopping 50 hits a day now and have a few regular commenters, so I thought I’d dust this favorite off, update it a bit, and post it again.…

  • Aboard 2163

    If I hadn’t remembered the number painted on this bus, it would have been just any other old South Bend city bus. But because I remembered this bus’s number, coming across this photo brought back a memory. I usually remember numbers because I hear a rhythm in them. It’s kind of annoying, actually. My dad’s…

  • 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…

  • South Bend bridges

    I was in South Bend over the long weekend. I went for a drive one afternoon and wound up following Northside Blvd. its entire length along the St. Joseph River. I hadn’t driven that way in more than 20 years, back when I didn’t have enough experience to appreciate what the city had to offer.…

  • Lincolnway Foods burns

    The sad demise of Lincolnway Foods, a longtime grocery on the Michigan Road in South Bend.

  • The Michigan Road

    When Indiana was new, most Hoosiers lived along the Ohio River. The state’s first and largest city, Madison, was on the river, and the state’s first capital, Corydon, was near the river. Indiana wasn’t ten years old in 1825 when the capital moved to Indianapolis at the state’s swampy center. People needed ways to get to the…

  • Blizzard of ’78

    Thirty years ago yesterday the TV weatherman warned of a coming blizzard. By afternoon thirty years ago today, I sat in school watching a wall of white through the window as the storm moved in. School let out early. I leaned hard against the wicked cold winds, stinging snow against my face, as I walked the…

  • School speed limits

    This is where I went to elementary school. James Monroe School, built in 1931, was probably a model of modern school buildings in its day. Its slate roof and copper gutters had to cost a fortune. It was built anticipating growth on South Bend’s south side. I once saw a 1941 photograph of a class…

  • On the small screen

    I debuted on TV in 1976, back when stay-at-home moms were still called homemakers. There were enough of them then that locally produced homemaker shows aired in the morning on stations across the country. A woman named Dorothy Frisk hosted South Bend’s homemaker show, The Dorothy Frisk Show, live each weekday on WSBT-TV. It was…