In April 1940, a line of men formed in an alley outside a city mission in Dubuque, Iowa. John Vachon’s Farm Security Administration caption states exactly what they awaited: a meal to be served at 5 p.m.
The record preserves not only the purpose of the line but the serving time. The meal would begin at five, while the waiting area was not a dining room inside the mission but the alley outside it. Limited indoor space and a fixed starting time placed recipients in an outdoor sequence. The catalogue does not provide the number waiting, their arrival times or the menu, so none is inferred.
A charitable meal reorganised part of a person’s day through both place and time. As five o’clock approached, the alley became a temporary waiting room. Relief did not begin only inside the building with a plate of food; the queue leading to the entrance was also part of its operation.