Rosalynn Carter's Cheese Ring

Or: Puttin' on a Ritz

First Lady Rosalynn Carter puts in a call for more Ritz crackers to White House chef Roland Mesnier. (Diana Walker/Getty Images)

It was some sort of family holiday, probably Easter, when my stepmother insisted my father pull off the road and into the parking lot of a suburban Simi Valley recreation area. We were just a few minutes from our destination (our cousins’ house), but Holly rarely made demands— especially of my father— and the urgency in her voice was clear enough that he responded with unquestioning acquiescence, which was a much rarer and more surprising occurrence than one of his wife’s entreaties.

But after sitting in a car for nearly two and a half hours with roughly 120 miles of roadway behind us, Holly did not make tracks for the nearest place of public easement, as I assumed she would. Instead, she headed for the trunk, asked Dad to pop it open, and immediately got busy doing lord-knows-what. Curious, I got out of the car to stretch my legs a bit and made my way cautiously around to the back of the gunmetal grey Hyundai with the 2THFIXR vanity plates to see what she was up to. Using the white top of a Coleman® cooler as a makeshift table, she appeared to be assembling some sort of elaborate snack, as the Ziploc® bags of crackers on the otherwise tidy, carpeted floor of the trunk seemed to indicate. I summoned the courage to ask her what she was doing.