Notes from the Land of Spam

I’ll admit it: I went to Spam Jam to make fun of it.

For the uninitiated (including, probably, everyone on the East Coast), Spam Jam is a summer festival that Hormel hosts in its hometown – which is Austin, MN, in case you find yourself face-to-face with Regis anytime soon.

Hormel has a pretty good sense of humor about Spam. They even let the Minnesota State Lottery use Spam for a scratch game. The TV spot is pretty funny: A split screen compares a lotto ticket on the right with a can of Spam on the left. “Goes great with pineapple,” a caption boasts at the bottom of each. “Needs no refrigeration.” Then the lotto ticket gets the tag, “Could be worth $25,000,” there’s a long beat of Muzak, and the Spam can gets the tag, “Needs no refrigeration.” Any corporation that pokes fun at its flagship brand should throw a hell of a party.

I am still a Chicagoan by temperament (though a Minnesotan by geography), so I was cynical enough to think that Spam Jam (short for “jamboree,” for you non-Heartlanders) would be just the right dose of dorky Americana to kick off the July Fourth weekend. Besides, it smelled like branding-on-the-grill, which always whets my professional appetite.

My husband, who was featured in the local paper for his own Spam recipe last summer, was not tough to convince, and the kids didn’t get a vote. So on Saturday morning we bundled into the minivan – heck, I even made chocolate chip cookies for the trip – and drove an hour south to self-proclaimed Spamtown USA.

Was it ever.

I’m talking every other guy in a Spam T-shirt, women with Spam cans painted on their faces, Spam mini-golf, the Spamettes singing group, rides on the Spam Belle paddleboat, Spam tacos, Spam-fried rice, Spam pizza, Spam marinara, Spam gyros, Spam, Spam, Spam, and Spam. If Monty Python had a gig on the Main Stage it wouldn’t have seemed out of line.

My husband actually got into a very serious discussion with an older gentleman about whether Turkey Spam was actually Spam. “You get the least little bit of poultry in there, and it messes up the texture and tastes like wet feathers,” he said, and my husband nodded sagely. Then he bolted down the midway to hear the results of the recipe contest. (Winner: South-of-the-Border Sandwiches with hard-boiled eggs, salsa, and cheddar cheese. Second place: Townhouse Barbecue Spam Muffins.)

You couldn’t help but get in the mood. Even my daughter, who refused to have fun because I “forced her” to come and kept asking for “something normal” to eat, eventually gave a thumbs-up to grilled Spam and cheese curds, then spent 20 minutes devising a clever tackle box/Weber grill gift-wrapping scenario to present her dad with a Spam fishing lure ($7 in the merchandise tent). The only serious folks in the crowd were the kids waiting for balloon animals from Bubbles the Christian Clown. Well, and the “wet feathers” guy.

In the middle of the midway was a giant map and a woman handing out pushpins for people to mark their hometowns. There were three from Alaska, a smattering from Texas, and maybe a half-dozen plunked into the Atlantic Ocean with “Germany” and “Netherlands” written in ball-point pen beside them.

Most, as you might suspect, were clustered around Austin. These people weren’t making fun of Spam, but they sure were having fun with it. These are the folks that work the Spam production line, put their kids through college on Spam, eat Spam cold from the can with a plastic spoon. It dawned on me that this festival wasn’t about branding, or consumers, it was about a small town’s claim to fame. Americana doesn’t get more genuine than that. It’s ineffable brand loyalty.

Spam’s hold on its hometown really became clear at the only Spam-free zone in the park, The Cooking Light On the Move touring van. The 18-wheeler drew long lines with its lure of recipes and samples. (A half-hour into the wait, the guy behind me in line said, “This is a long time to wait for something that’s free.”) In the end, it was disappointing. We snaked past racks of recipes, samples, and magnets clustered around mini-billboards crammed together like transit ads in a mobile home. This was not promotion at its best. But at least it was air-conditioned.

Only on the drive home did I realize that the Cooking Light truck should have been nothing more, that it shouldn’t – couldn’t – encroach on Spam territory. It would have been rude to upstage the host.

One of the entries in the Burma Shave-style sign contest said it best:

Pillsbury makes bread and rolls, Smuckers makes some jam.

They don’t count in Austin, though, Because Hormel makes the Spam.