I didn’t know that Ritz crackers were new then. My mother’s main story about the depression involved Ritz crackers.
My mother was one of 10 children and she was very lucky because her best friend’s widowed mother had a small pension and made sure that my mother had lunch every day and often that was her only meal.
One day she came home from school and her mother was crying because their youngest sister hadn’t had anything to eat all day. My mother went to the corner grocery store whose owners were so good to her family and stole a box of Ritz crackers. It haunted her all her life and she was still very ambivalent about it because her sister needed food but she stole from someone who had treated she and her family well.
We used to spend every other summer in her home town and the corner store was still there and we spent a lot of money in that store. She did tell them what she did and she tried to make amends and they said that they knew what she’d done and understood.
Thanks for telling us about your mother and the Ritz crackers. Glad the store owners understood.