The destination was New Orleans, and I had two primary goals: get a muffuletta from Central Grocery and visit the National World War II Museum. Missions accomplished.
Spotting the actress Linda Hamilton of Terminator franchise fame at the table next to ours at breakfast? That was, in New Orleans terms, lagniappe.
Something extra. A bonus.
The museum was the main attraction, as you might imagine. Tripadvisor lists it as the top thing to do in the city, and New Orleans is a city that offers a whole lot of things to do.
It opened in 2000 as the National D-Day Museum but has expanded its scope to include all aspects of the war, in particular the American role in defeating the Axis powers. As members of the Greatest Generation fade away, it serves as an enduring reminder of a time when this country could actually unite in the service of a common goal.
Unity on any topic seems almost a quaint notion nowadays. The last semblance of it came in the days and weeks after 9/11, our updated version of Dec. 7, 1941, as a “date which will live in infamy.” But that brief rush of patriotic fervor wilted through years and years of Middle East wars of dubious benefit, not unlike our experience in Vietnam.
World War II was the “good war,” of course. Fought by men who, when I was a kid, were the neighbors and paper mill workers and bankers and Little League coaches who kept society stitched together in a way that doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
For the most part, they didn’t talk about their experiences. But they must have lived the rest of their lives knowing that no hardship they might face could compare to what they’d already been through. The sacrifices women made on the homefront were no small ordeal, either, as displays on ration books and ramped-up wartime production attest.
The conflict seems so distant now. But it was a mere 20 years in the past then, and still playing out as nightly entertainment in American living rooms as drama in TV shows like “Combat!” “The Gallant Men,” “Rat Patrol” and even as comedy with “Hogan’s Heroes” and “McHale’s Navy.”
Children my age spent free time imitating those 1940s heroes with neighborhood games of Army, our plastic toy rifles and machine guns again saving the world for democracy.
Examples of the real weaponry abound in the museum, and though I’m no gun enthusiast I found myself looking for a Browning automatic rifle and Thompson submachine gun, as used by Private Kirby and Sergeant Saunders in “Combat!” I was an impressionable youth.
I don’t mean to suggest that the museum glorifies war; it does not. Instead, it rightfully celebrates the millions of men (and fewer women) who found it their lot to take part in it, making clear that it was very much a life-or-death situation. So very many never made it home.
The average age of an American soldier in the war was 26. They look older in the museum’s many photos and videos and possessed of the kind of resolve that it took to make it through, day after day. We non-veterans can only imagine.
Kayne and I spent about four hours in the museum; I stayed about the same time on a previous visit a few years back. You could easily spend much more; reading every exhibit, watching every video, listening to every recorded tale would take days and days.
Whatever you might choose is worthwhile. We owe those men and women for our way of life.
As for those other NOLA accomplishments: Linda Hamilton apparently has a home in Algiers Point, where we were staying. She looked in fine fettle and could probably still give a T-1000 Terminator headaches. Our breakfast spot was Tout de Suite Café, in case you want to try to duplicate our sighting.
The muffuletta – which for unknown reasons I’ve always pronounced muffu-lotta – I bought at a wine store next door to Central Grocery, where the sandwich was invented but which is still closed for repairs to damage from Hurricane Ida in 2021. It was good eats, but not the best I’ve ever had; I prefer the bread toasted.
So that honor goes to one from a little diner called Biscuits & Barbecue in Mineola, New York. Alas, it is apparently now closed. I’m open to suggestions for a Nashville contender.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at jrogink@gmail.com