My maternal grandmother and her younger sister were born during the Depression. Their family was ok during the actual Depression. My great-grandfather worked as an auto-mechanic in a Ford factory in Detroit; instead of laying people off during the Depression, the factory manager instead decided to make all his employees part time instead so that everyone could work at least three days a week. They were still poor after the Depression was over, though, and in the early 1940s, my great-grandfather wrote a bad check to pay for groceries. He went to prison for a year or two, I think, while my grandmother and her younger sister had to live in a Catholic orphanage in Detroit. It was run by nuns who would take them on trips to the beach occasionally. My grandmother said that the children would be taken to one part of the beach to swim and play, and the nuns would take turns watching them so that the nuns got a turn to swim and sunbathe at another part of the beach. This was back when all nuns wore the long habits and veils, and you could only see their hands and faces. My grandmother and her sister would sneak off to try to see the nuns in their bathing suits.
ETA: My grandmother also likes eating sandwiches made with peanut butter, bologna, and mustard, which was a popular sandwich back then.