It’s a Rorschach test for our troubled times. What do you see in this picture?:

Wednesday morning, just prior to 8 a.m. Three hundred or so vehicles in the parking lot of a high school that should be in session but isn’t.

For some, with the picture broadened out to show the Central Texas Food Bank trucks and volunteers, it’s a picture of despair as hungry households lined up for a 28-pound box of shelf-stable food and hygiene supplies.

But maybe it’s really a picture of hope, a tableau of neighbors helping neighbors they don’t know. The food distribution began at 9 a.m. and went until past noon. Some of the vehicles showed up two hours early.

The people you meet and the stories you hear in a food line: Some are there for themselves. Some are there for their families. Some are there for others.

Some are there for Wednesday’s lunch.

I got there about 8 a.m. By then, Derrick Chubbs, the food bank’s CEO and president, and the army of volunteers already had perfected the parking lot choreography that efficiently would move the hundreds of vehicles through the food lines.

"Yes," he said as we perused the early arrivers, "that’s pretty much been the trend for the last several weeks when people are lined up just like this."

Thanks, he said, to the "generosity and support of the community," the food bank has been able to meet the 200 percent increase in demand in recent weeks. That’s above the usual 50,000 families per week the food bank served pre-pandemic.

How long can this go on? Common question, Chubbs said.

"Our resources are stretched to a point that we’ve never seen before," he said, adding, "Our concern now is more in procuring food than in actually being able to distribute it."

"We depend heavily on donated product. And we’ve seen all the grocery stores and what their shelves are like. If their shelves are lacking, then they’re not donating the food."

As the lines continued to grow, Chubbs acknowledged the challenging reality of our times: "There are people here who never thought they’d be here."

Like Marcus Miller, 49, who was among those seated behind the steering wheel, waiting for the line to start moving.

"Hanging in there," he said when I asked how things were going.

That’s not bad for a former heating and air conditioning guy who’s been out of work since February. He’s got two adult children and six grandkids and lives by himself. He’s applied for and is awaiting unemployment benefits.

Miller spends his day web surfing in search of work.

A couple of hours or so after he pulled into the line, Miller loaded groceries into his trunk. He was smiling as I saw him pull away — smiling through adversity that was unforeseeable several months ago.

Pat James also was in line early. He’s 55 and still working, but showed up to get food for his mom, who has Alzheimer’s.

"Never in a million years," he said when I asked if he thought he’d ever see anything like this. "It’s crazy right now."

We both agreed many of us have endured challenges tossed our way by life.

"Well," James said, "but the thing with this is you don’t know when it’s going to end."

Seated behind his steering wheel and waiting in line, Willie Whitley told me what was happening in that parking lot was "very, very, very, very important" to him. Turns out it was important as in what’s-for-lunch important. Whitley, 50, lost his job in a downtown restaurant two weeks ago.

"It’s been hard," he said, "and I had no food. Just no food."

He’s a single parent with four kids at home.

"I’m just trying to make it," Whitley said, "day to day. That’s why I’m here."

Some of the food he got Wednesday will go in the pantry. But the need was immediate.

"I’m going to eat it right away," he said. "Whatever they got. I’m just tired of eating beans and rice. I can tell you all the different ways to make some beans and rice."

If not for what he got from the food bank, what would be on his menu this day?

"That’s a good question," he said.

And he had a good question for me: "How long you think this is going to go on?"

Don’t know, I told him, "Or how it ends."

"‘Right," he said, "exactly."

I’d promised myself Wednesday I wouldn’t get political with anybody in line. So I just listened as Whitley vented.

"Didn’t the president know this was happening and he’s just now telling us about this?" he said. "It had to be out a long time ago. And now he’s just telling us about it now? People are dying. I just think government should let us know what’s going on. You know what I mean?"

Yes, there’s a lot to unpack there. But I’m not going to just now.

"My kids, they’re tired of eating ramen noodles and stuff like that," Whitley told me. "And I’m taking care of grandkids, too."

Despite the level of despair that was sure to exist in many of the vehicles in line, Texas Longhorn football Coach Tom Herman and his wife, Michelle, were among those who saw hope in that parking lot. The Hermans (unrelated to me, best I can tell) smiled and chatted with people as they distributed boxes. Let the record show I saw the coach bang his head on a trunk lid, but I saw no immediate need to place him in the concussion protocol.

"Look at all these cars," the coach said. "This is unbelievable what the food bank is doing and helping so many people to survive. And we’re happy to help."

And you should be happy to donate to something that does so much for so many.

A few rows over, and masked like most people, Karen Draper told me she was picking up food for a South Austin group home that houses eight "mentally challenged" men, including her brother. She talked about the special challenges the pandemic poses for those men.

"There are a couple or three gentlemen in there that do work" outside the group home, she said. "Now they’re completely isolated, and they’re not able to do that."

"It’s enormous," she said of the challenge that ensues when the men’s routines are interrupted, "because they are routine driven. And it’s very difficult for them to change the way that they think on a daily basis. It completely changes their schedule."

Draper said trying to explain what’s going on is difficult, if not impossible. Why, I thought, should it be any different for those men than for the rest of us?

"There’s one gentleman there that is constantly asking, ‘When is this going to be over? When is this going to be over?’" she said.

I ended my chat with Draper by posing the Rorschach test. Was what was going on in that high school parking lot on that morning a depressing snapshot of the daunting challenge we face or a hopeful image of a community uniting and rising to meet the challenge.

Draper didn’t miss a beat before answering: "It is so hopeful that people are volunteering."

Yes.

When it was over, Chubbs told me boxes of food had been given to 1,545 households. Sounds pretty successful, I said.

"Oh, yes," he told me. "Anytime we feed one that’s a successful day."

The scene will be repeated Monday at Del Valle High School starting at 9 a.m. But you can be sure the line will start forming long before that.