The background is not too far from current outskirts of El Paso as it sits today. I was wondering when a picture from my hometown would pop up one day. Poignant image. Thanks for sharing as always!

I wonder what makes it so bad at home. Is there just not a home? Because you'd think that if there were just financial problems at home, she could cook like this just as well there. Hopefully there wasn't something else bad waiting for her there.

OK, now I'm reading more into photos and captions than I should and annoying myself. Either way, this caption really makes this photo.

What I noticed most about this particular photo, as compared to the other Depression-era photos, is that there is not the direct gaze at the camera. This woman is busy doing something for herself. Not passively sitting and enduring, but doing what must be done. Hotel maid, cook, laundress she is described. All are grueling, thankless jobs. She must have been a woman of great endurance and determination. I'm more inspired by this photo and it's caption than I have been by any other thus far.

I imagine it was hot, even in the morning. Yet this woman appears to be wearing a clean and well-pressed dress. Her shoes intrigue me. I don't think I've seen anything like them before. I wonder what became of her?

It seems passing strange to me that, while many Shorpyites have been moved to give their two cents worth on other, recent Great Depression pictures-analyzing and projecting their emotions on the set of the nursing mother's jaw or the grin of the dirty-faced boy, no one has has had a word for this determined, realistic woman. The rocky foreground, the barren wasteland and the almost infinitely distant horizon make her simple act of preparing food seem quite heroic. Perhaps her position in society better prepared her for the Depression, giving her a capacity for survival and not encumbering her with a lot of easily broken dreams.