I like the paper window plug .

My first thought was that the canned globes were olives but olives aren't usually so spherical. Next guess: cherries.

I can find no references to Su Mai Real Worcestershire Sauce (on the table, by the salt and pepper). I did discover from "The History of Worcestershire Sauce (1837-2012)" that soy sauce was one of Lea & Perrins' not-so-secret ingredients at the time, but that the War made it extremely difficult to obtain (perhaps because of supply chain problems with traditional sources of soy sauce in the far east). I'm curious whether this bottle of Su Mai was a prewar product, or the only brand available during the war on the shelves in remote New Mexico.

And we appreciated their sacrifice!

I see here that Ms. Muller's cigarette packs have the red bullseye on a white background, exactly like the Luckies smoked by my Assistant Scoutmaster in the early 80s, a man missing parts of fingers, and having skin graft scars, resulting from a drag-racing accident in the 60s.

American Tobacco claimed in 1942 that they eliminated the green in their packaging because the negligible amount of copper in the ink was needed for the war effort, but it turns out that this was just an excuse to eliminate a color which had impeded their efforts to market to women smokers for a decade.

I'm pretty sure Ms. Muller was adapting to living off the grid. Peñasco was a remote location. I don't see a power cord for the radio, a model which was designed for operation on battery power as well as AC or DC utility power. The kerosene lamp is unlit, and the chimney conspicuously clean, as it would have been cleaned for a photo shoot, and the lighting is coming from an uncustomary angle, leading me to believe that it's a battery-triggered magnesium flash.

In addition to the salt & pepper, there is also the sugar bowl, cup & saucer, and her plate; all Fiesta.

I have my gran's set of salt, pepper, sugar, and their "tray". Her daily set was all Fiesta that she bought back in the '30s, shortly after its introduction c. 1936. My daily use Fiestaware is all more recent, dating from the 1990s.

My grandmother used to can grapes that looked like that: little globular things in a colored liquid.

L.S.M.F.T.

In the mid-1950s my grandfather had a lung removed (lung cancer). He was in his hospital room recovering. Bunch of his coworkers were there. The usual visit to wish well of a friend.

They were all having a smoke ... including my grandfather. Doc walks in, sees all this. Grabs my grandfather's smoke, tells him that is the last one he will ever have. He quit with that smoke. Last one. He lived another 20 years.

Well, I guess that's one way to fix a hole in your window. Nice sturdy locks too. That sure wouldn't fly in today's world.

Tsk, tsk -- a smoking nurse. Not uncommon though, even now.

It’s difficult, usually, to identify a fountain pen in this kind of photo. This is a happy exception.

I took this one, at first, to be a double-jewel Esterbrook Model J; but that model made its appearance in 1948. What we have here, instead, is a Parker Vacumatic: either solid black or one of the darker ringed/striated colors. The jeweled barrel-end tassie tells us that it’s a pre-1942 model; the Vac switched to streamlined unadorned blind caps in that year, as a war conservation measure. I can’t identify a specific Vac model, but maybe a real Parker expert (I’m a Sheaffer guy) would be able to make an informed guess.

The ink is Parker as well; Ms. Muller followed the practice -- more common in those days -- of matching the ink brand to the pen brand. (Of course, the ink choice may also have been a matter of buying whatever was available locally.) It’s a Spanish-language package, obviously, and it’s Royal Blue, either washable or permanent (I can’t make out the last word of the product descriptor, which looks to be an abbreviation).

Ms. Muller may have been forced to use wadded-up paper to plug the hole in the window glass, and the newspapers may not have shown up with any regularity, but at least she had a nice pen; the Vacumatic, even the entry-level range, was always a fine writing instrument.

[Azul Real Fijo = Permanent Royal Blue. - Dave]

Thanks so much for the enlarged view! And a dual-language package, too.

When was last time you saw a young nurse pounding multiple packs of Lucky Strikes?

Seems she got home delivery of a newspaper, just not at her doorstep.

By John Dos Passos, in the Modern Library edition of 1937.

My granny, who would have been a few years older than her, had the same Fiestaware salt and pepper shakers; used them until she died in 1978.

Wonder what the canning jar, with what appear to be giant capers, actually contains.

http://elmphotography.com/radios/radio19.htm

Zenith 6G601, early. They started with the sailboat on the grille cloth. After Pearl Harbor, and before domestic production shut down, they changed that to a B-17.

I have a nearly identical radio, the 6G501. It was the first tube radio I had refurbished, which was a huge pain because all the rubber-insulated wiring had turned to rock and cracked, so every wire had to be replaced. It has remarkably good performance and works dandy as a portable. I listened to the ballgame on mine just this Thursday.