![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistAustin, Minnesota, is about 30 miles from where I grew up.
It's also where George A. Hormel opened a meat-packing plant more than 100 years ago. There Spam was born in 1937. Now Austin's website is spamtownusa.com. The town of about 20,000 people has a Spam Museum, at 1937 Spam Boulevard.
"This place is 16,500 square feet of pure pork fun," said Shawn Radford, Spam Museum and archives manager.
What a job title. What a quote.
He also gets to say things like this: "Spam really is an American food icon, you know. Apple pie, hot dogs ... and Spam."
Spam gave its name to junk e-mail via a Monty Python skit that features some Vikings singing "Spam, spam, spam, spam ..." The theory behind this is that it's supposed to indicate that "spam" drowns out all other conversations in the skit as spam e-mail does on the Internet. However, as you can see, the rest of the conversations are also about spam. But that would imply that the rest of the Internet is little better than spam e-mail, and of course we all know that isn't true.
"We have a product we really believe in," said the guy from a few paragraphs ago, "a product with a long and interesting history, and that product's name was co-opted for something that a lot of people really hate -- spam e-mails. So, sure, there was a lot of debate about how the whole situation should be handled."
Luckily, Hormel took it well. "The company decided that instead of turning the lawyers loose we'd just assume that people can tell the difference between good canned meat and bad e-mail and that people wouldn't confuse the two." This is the sort of sensible niceness I expect in a company thirty miles away from my house.
During World War II, Hormel shipped enough cans of Spam to troops that the soldiers could have three square meals a day. But gah! Three meals of Spam? Those poor things. "World War II veterans come in here and tell me they couldn't even look at a can of Spam for years after coming home from the war," said Radford. I don't blame them. I hate Spam, and I haven't had it nearly that often. It's all salt and grease. My impression is confirmed by a look at the nutrition information on the side of the can. A serving—two thin slices—contains 30% of your daily requirement for saturated fat and 31% of your sodium.
Anyway, the soldiers were told they should be lucky they got to eat at all; rations were much smaller before food could be prepared to have a long shelf-life. But still ... There's an animated WWII soldier in one of the exhibits, who drones on, "Spam fried, Spam boiled, Spam with cheese sauce, Spam and eggs, Spam surprise," listing the ways Spam was prepared for the troops.
As if they weren't suffering enough, just being in the war.
There's a packing plant where visitors can learn hands-on how Spam is made ... and what it's made of. Hormel says it contains a mixture of ham and chopped pork shoulder. Ham is Hormel's top-of-the-line product, and Spam was created partly to use up what was left of the pig after the ham (which is the shoulder meat, if I'm remembering my dad's instruction correctly) had been removed. But only the wholesome parts. Of course.
"Chances are that whatever you think is in there, isn't," Radford said.
Visitors can also check out a world map that shows who is eating the most Spam. In the United States, Hawaii tops the chart. I was intrigued by this, because I remember hearing one of the guests on NPR's news quiz said that Polynesian cannibals claim Spam tastes the most like human flesh. As far as countries go, I think Guam is the highest. See, South Pacific again!
Turns out this perception is attributed to Paul Theroux, a travel writer. But here's what he actually said:
For the record, though, many of the Spam-loving cultures of the Pacific Rim have no history of cannibalism; a writer visiting a tribe called the Pingelapese was amazed (and dismayed) that they'd give up their indigenous, healthy diet to eat Spam at every meal, and the Pingelapese never ate people. Hawaii has been cannibal-free (more or less) since the Christians found it in the early 19th century. The true popularity of Spam might have more to do with the fact that other types of meat are hard to come by and hard to keep fresh. Fresh meat is stored primarily in a self-propelled biounit known as a pig, which is only slaughtered for special occasions. If you're looking for a spicy bit to have with your breadfruit you can't beat the convenience of Spam.
As far as I can tell, there's no mention of cannibals in the Spam Museum.
Asked what visitors' usual reaction to the place is, Radford said, "When they first come in, almost everyone is talking about how they can't believe they are actually visiting a Spam museum. They're wondering why they are even here. Most people wouldn't come if admission to the museum wasn't free.
"But when they leave, people are almost always talking about how much fun they had and a lot of them are singing the Monty Python Spam song."
It's also where George A. Hormel opened a meat-packing plant more than 100 years ago. There Spam was born in 1937. Now Austin's website is spamtownusa.com. The town of about 20,000 people has a Spam Museum, at 1937 Spam Boulevard.
"This place is 16,500 square feet of pure pork fun," said Shawn Radford, Spam Museum and archives manager.
What a job title. What a quote.
He also gets to say things like this: "Spam really is an American food icon, you know. Apple pie, hot dogs ... and Spam."
Spam gave its name to junk e-mail via a Monty Python skit that features some Vikings singing "Spam, spam, spam, spam ..." The theory behind this is that it's supposed to indicate that "spam" drowns out all other conversations in the skit as spam e-mail does on the Internet. However, as you can see, the rest of the conversations are also about spam. But that would imply that the rest of the Internet is little better than spam e-mail, and of course we all know that isn't true.
"We have a product we really believe in," said the guy from a few paragraphs ago, "a product with a long and interesting history, and that product's name was co-opted for something that a lot of people really hate -- spam e-mails. So, sure, there was a lot of debate about how the whole situation should be handled."
Luckily, Hormel took it well. "The company decided that instead of turning the lawyers loose we'd just assume that people can tell the difference between good canned meat and bad e-mail and that people wouldn't confuse the two." This is the sort of sensible niceness I expect in a company thirty miles away from my house.
During World War II, Hormel shipped enough cans of Spam to troops that the soldiers could have three square meals a day. But gah! Three meals of Spam? Those poor things. "World War II veterans come in here and tell me they couldn't even look at a can of Spam for years after coming home from the war," said Radford. I don't blame them. I hate Spam, and I haven't had it nearly that often. It's all salt and grease. My impression is confirmed by a look at the nutrition information on the side of the can. A serving—two thin slices—contains 30% of your daily requirement for saturated fat and 31% of your sodium.
Anyway, the soldiers were told they should be lucky they got to eat at all; rations were much smaller before food could be prepared to have a long shelf-life. But still ... There's an animated WWII soldier in one of the exhibits, who drones on, "Spam fried, Spam boiled, Spam with cheese sauce, Spam and eggs, Spam surprise," listing the ways Spam was prepared for the troops.
As if they weren't suffering enough, just being in the war.
There's a packing plant where visitors can learn hands-on how Spam is made ... and what it's made of. Hormel says it contains a mixture of ham and chopped pork shoulder. Ham is Hormel's top-of-the-line product, and Spam was created partly to use up what was left of the pig after the ham (which is the shoulder meat, if I'm remembering my dad's instruction correctly) had been removed. But only the wholesome parts. Of course.
"Chances are that whatever you think is in there, isn't," Radford said.
Visitors can also check out a world map that shows who is eating the most Spam. In the United States, Hawaii tops the chart. I was intrigued by this, because I remember hearing one of the guests on NPR's news quiz said that Polynesian cannibals claim Spam tastes the most like human flesh. As far as countries go, I think Guam is the highest. See, South Pacific again!
Turns out this perception is attributed to Paul Theroux, a travel writer. But here's what he actually said:
It was a theory of mine that former cannibals of Oceania now feasted on Spam because Spam came the nearest to approximating the porky taste of human flesh. "Long pig" as they called a cooked human being in much of Melanesia. It was a fact that the people-eaters of the Pacific had all evolved, or perhaps degenerated, into Spam-eaters. And in the absence of Spam they settled for corned beef, which also had a corpsy flavor.Theroux has said it was a joke, but the legend still persists. It's just one of those things that people want to be true, isn't it? Well, some people. Surely not the sort who'd be my friend or read long posts about Spam, it'd take something more perverted than that ...
For the record, though, many of the Spam-loving cultures of the Pacific Rim have no history of cannibalism; a writer visiting a tribe called the Pingelapese was amazed (and dismayed) that they'd give up their indigenous, healthy diet to eat Spam at every meal, and the Pingelapese never ate people. Hawaii has been cannibal-free (more or less) since the Christians found it in the early 19th century. The true popularity of Spam might have more to do with the fact that other types of meat are hard to come by and hard to keep fresh. Fresh meat is stored primarily in a self-propelled biounit known as a pig, which is only slaughtered for special occasions. If you're looking for a spicy bit to have with your breadfruit you can't beat the convenience of Spam.
As far as I can tell, there's no mention of cannibals in the Spam Museum.
Asked what visitors' usual reaction to the place is, Radford said, "When they first come in, almost everyone is talking about how they can't believe they are actually visiting a Spam museum. They're wondering why they are even here. Most people wouldn't come if admission to the museum wasn't free.
"But when they leave, people are almost always talking about how much fun they had and a lot of them are singing the Monty Python Spam song."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 11:33 am (UTC)Now there's a disturbing image.:-)
>"This place is 16,500 square feet of pure pork fun,"
They replaced the water slide with a SPAM slide.
>said Shawn Radford, Spam Museum and archives manager.
I imagine you can archive SPAM rather well.
Hell, you can probably write on it. Archaeologists in the future will discover our writings on spices of preserved meat.
*cannibal issues snipped*
Cool. I'll have to remember this when I start researching cannibalism. (Not for myself, just something I'm writing.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 12:00 pm (UTC)That's a disturbing image.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 11:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 12:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 11:56 am (UTC)I did like seeing the Monty Python skit.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 11:58 am (UTC)