From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Delectable, Not Deletable
A visit to the Spam museum.
AUSTIN, Minn.--Just off Interstate 90, across the street from Johnny's Restaurant, a local greasy spoon, you'll find the world's first--and likely last--museum dedicated solely to Spam. No, not the annoying e-mail messages in your inbox. I'm talking about the "miracle meat" in a can your grandma used to make you eat.
That's right. In this quiet, Southern Minnesota town, on the corner of Main Street and Spam Boulevard, stands "16,500 Feet of Spam Nirvana" handsomely housed in a multistory brick building bearing the patented blue and yellow "Spam" logo. One look at the tourists lining up to take photos with a life-size bronze statue of a farmer taking his hogs to market and you know you're in the right place.
Opened in September 2001 on the site of an old Kmart, the Spam Museum has become something of a kitsch icon throughout the Midwest. The folks at the museum have taken out billboards up and down I-90 with quirky messages like: "The Spam Museum: Believe the Hype" and "Find Out What's Inside."
Thousands have done just that since TV anchorman Tom Brokaw spoke at the grand opening in June 2002. Barbara Billingsley ("Leave It to Beaver"), Marion Ross ("Happy Days") and Debra Jo Rupp ("That '70s Show") were also on hand. Seems TV moms just couldn't feed their kids enough Spam. Product placement and celebrity endorsements have been with us for a long, long time.
Personally, I've never been a big fan of Spam--or any canned meat for that matter. And although I grew up about an hour's drive from Spam Boulevard in the Northern Iowa town of Mason City, I can't recall my mother--or grandmother--ever opening a can of meat for breakfast, lunch or dinner and yelling, "Come and get it!"
Nonetheless, after petting the bronze hogs, I entered the museum lobby where an elderly woman in a blue-and-yellow Spam polo shirt, khakis and white sneakers wasted no time greeting me. "Welcome!" she said gleefully. "I will be your Spambassador today!" She then handed me a map and proudly directed my attention to the "Wall of Spam" towering above: "There are some 3,500 cans of Spam in this display," she said. "That could feed a healthy adult for just about 10 years." Not knowing what else to say, I looked my kindly Spambassador in the eye, smiled, and said, "Wow, that's a lot of Spam." (An utterance she no doubt hears quite frequently.)
But as I learned during my tour of the museum--complete with more than a dozen exhibits, a state-of-the-art 42-seat theater, a high-tech interactive Spam Exam, and an impressive conveyor belt that keeps some 800 cans of Spam forever circling overhead--3,500 cans of Spam really isn't a lot of Spam. According to Spam Museum archivist Shawn Radford, Americans purchase about 3.6 cans of Spam every second. That adds up to 216 cans a minute, 12,960 cans every hour. And that's not even counting the millions of cans sold every day around the world in countries as far afield as China, Australia, England and Brazil. Indeed, for a pinkish, processed, canned luncheon meat surrounded in gelatinous gook, Spam has quite an amazing story to tell--and a uniquely American one at that.
It all started when George A. Hormel opened a small retail meat shop here in Austin in 1891. Within months he opened his own packinghouse. Today, Hormel Food Corp. boasts $4.1 billion in annual sales, and produces such well-known brands as Dinty Moore, Jennie-O and Little Sizzlers. But none is more famous or successful than Spam, which is now trademarked in more than 100 countries. In fact, more than six billion 12 ounce cans of Spam--which, I was assured by Hormel reps, contains nothing but pork shoulder, ham, salt, water, sugar, a few "secret spices" and a touch of sodium nitrite (for color and as a preservative)--have been produced since Jay C. Hormel, George's son and the father of Spam, had the name registered as a trademark on May 11, 1937.
Where did the name come from? Today, most Hormel employees will tell you that it is derived from "spiced ham"; others say it comes from "shoulder of pork and ham." But I prefer the story told in "Spam--A Biography," by food columnist and canned-meat enthusiast Carolyn Wyman. Legend has it that an actor, Kenneth Daigneau, came up with the name at a boozy New Year's Eve party in 1936. Apparently, Jay Hormel offered a drink for each entry in a naming contest and $100 to the winner. Ms. Wyman doesn't say how many drinks Daigneau had before arriving at Spam, but I'd imagine he had quite a few.
World War II is when Spam really became a household name. Canned luncheon meat was part of most every GI's rations. While Hormel was just one of dozens of providers, soldiers called it all "Spam" and ate so much of it (by the end of the war some 150 million pounds from Hormel alone) they grew to hate it. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to a retired Hormel president many years later, "I ate my share of Spam along with millions of other soldiers. I'll even confess to a few unkind remarks about it--uttered during the strain of battle you understand. But as former Commander in Chief, I believe I can still officially forgive you your only sin: sending so much of it."
President Eisenhower's letter is just one of the gems you'll find at the museum. There's also a Spam production line where you and the kids can can your own can of Spam (alas, not the real stuff), as well as a fully operational KSPAM radio studio that features old Spam jingles. But my personal favorite is the video exhibit featuring Monty Python's 1970 "Green Midget Café," where Mr. Bun is left with no option but a plate of "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam." Cybernerds and people who actually study this stuff say this skit is the origin of the Internet term "to spam"--i.e., to send a seemingly endless stream of unsolicited, unwanted e-mail. Go figure.
If you make the trip, be sure to visit the Spam gift shop, where you can buy everything from "I ♥ SPAM" bumper stickers to Spam watches, golf bags and wine glasses. But the one thing you won't find is a Spam restaurant. You'll have to go across the street to Johnny's Restaurant for eats. Johnny has several Spam dishes to choose from, including the "Superman Spam Burger w/Fries" and the "Western Spam Burger w/Hashbrowns." As for this hungry traveler, I ordered the "8 oz. Always-Tender Hormel Pork Chops." And I'd go back for more.
Mr. Judge is an assistant editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal.
