6 Things Nutmeggers Argue About That Have No Right Answer

Ask a Nutmegger where Connecticut’s nickname came from, and the story changes depending on which town you ask in.

Even the Connecticut Historical Society admits nobody can prove colonial peddlers ever carved fake nutmegs to trick a buyer.

It’s not Connecticut’s only endless argument.

These are the things Nutmeggers argue about that have no right answer.

1. Apizza Wars

Nutmeggers have argued over New Haven’s apizza wars since Frank Pepe fired up a coal oven on Wooster Street in 1925 and built the city’s first apizza counter.

Locals still pronounce the word ah-beets, a holdover from the Neapolitan dialect Italian immigrants carried into the neighborhood.

Modern Apizza joined the argument in 1934, and Frank Pepe’s nephew opened a third counter, Sally’s Apizza, right on Wooster Street in 1938.

Nobody has agreed since.

The three pizzerias never settle it either, since the owners describe each other as friends rather than rivals while customers keep splitting three ways every week.

Together, the three shops turned New Haven into a nationally known pizza destination, something none of them could have pulled off alone.

2. Red Sox or Yankees

Nutmeggers split almost evenly between Red Sox and Yankees fans, and nobody has ever drawn an official line to settle the argument.

Facebook fan data once mapped the boundary roughly along the state’s old 4th and 5th congressional districts, with towns like Glastonbury sitting right on top of the line.

CBS News calls that boundary the Munson-Nixon line, named for Yankees catcher Thurman Munson and Red Sox outfielder Trot Nixon.

Waterbury sits right on it.

Bars in Waterbury have hosted the same argument for decades, and neither side has ever driven the other out of the neighborhood.

The same data set found the boundary lines up with the state’s political map, with Yankees towns leaning Republican and Red Sox towns leaning Democratic.

3. Wooden Nutmeg Legend

The wooden nutmeg legend explains the state’s most famous nickname, though nobody has ever proven it happened.

According to the story, traveling Yankee peddlers carved fake nutmegs out of wood and passed them off as spice to unsuspecting buyers.

The Connecticut Historical Society isn’t convinced either, since its historians say a wooden nutmeg swindle would have cost more to carve than store-bought nutmeg cost to sell.

The math never added up.

Whatever the truth turns out to be, Nutmeggers keep the nickname anyway.

4. Grinder, Wedge, or Sub

People argue over the name for the long sandwich, which carries three different names depending on the town a shopper orders it in.

Many towns across the state call it a grinder, but a pocket in the southwest corner still holds out for wedge, according to Edible Nutmeg magazine.

Nardelli’s, a sub shop that opened in Waterbury in 1922, built its business on an Italian submarine sandwich it called a New York grinder.

New York grinder is still the name many shoppers use.

Sub never caught on.

Order a wedge in Hartford, and the person behind the counter might stare at you.

5. Merritt or I-95

Connecticut drivers have argued for generations over whether the Merritt Parkway or I-95 gets them down the shoreline faster.

The Merritt Parkway opened in 1938 to relieve the traffic already choking the Boston Post Road.

It has banned commercial trucks from its lanes ever since.

Architect George Dunkelberger designed 69 different bridges along the parkway’s 37 miles, and each one still stands as a small art deco landmark drivers pass without looking twice.

Building it employed more than two thousand workers and cost twenty-one million dollars, Connecticut’s largest public works project at the time.

The federal government added the entire parkway to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, a rare honor for a road still carrying daily traffic.

I-95 lets the trucks through.

Which route wins depends on the hour, the destination, and how much a driver minds sitting behind a tractor-trailer, so the argument keeps going.

6. New England Question

People argue over Connecticut’s spot inside New England every few years, especially residents of Fairfield County.

Yankee Magazine has devoted whole features to the question.

So many towns in the state’s southwest corner function as commuter suburbs for New York City workers rather than as New England towns.

Geologists studying the Connecticut River side with the rest of New England anyway, since the same bedrock and the same river system run straight through the state.

Neither side backs down.

Litchfield County residents rarely weigh in at all.

Their stretch of the state reads as classic New England, with covered bridges and stone walls, no matter what Fairfield County decides.

Southwestern Connecticut picks up New York television and radio stations instead of Boston ones.

Diners there are as likely to serve Manhattan-style red chowder as the white chowder found across the rest of New England.