SPAM AT 50 : Plaudits, Protests for Popular Canned Lunch Meat

“You mean there’s a Spam air show too?” a woman outside the OakPark Mall asked, pointing toward the bright Midwestern sky. “What are they gonna do? Drop cans of the stuff on us?”

Welcome to Austin, Minn., land of 10,000 Spam recipes, and home last week to a four-day 50th birthday party for Spam, America’s maligned canned-pork icon.

“We intended this festival--and please call it ‘Cedar River Days Salutes 50 Years of Spam,’ not just ‘Spam Days’--to be a local, family event,” said Sharon Piller, executive director of the Austin Visitors & Convention Bureau. “We wanted to make sure city residents had a little something to do in Austin over the Fourth of July weekend . . . so they’d stick around town.”

A little something to do, indeed. The Independence Day weekend saw this southeastern Minnesota town of 26,000 host Mickey and Minnie Mouse (the official , direct-from-Disneyland mice), two parades, tractor pulls, air shows, a carnival midway and a circus. And if those summer-festival standbys weren’t enough, the curious Austinite could watch one of six television news crews (including one from MTV) or an Academy Award-winning documentary film maker or reporters from the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press or United Press International--all diligently covering Spam.

Born here at Geo. A. Hormel & Co. half a century ago, Spam is produced by the Austin-based meatpacker at the rate of 435 cans per minute. With more than 80 million pounds sold last year, the pink luncheon meat in the blue-and-yellow tin gave many in Austin, hard hit by a recent 13-month strike at Hormel that cost hundreds their jobs, something to celebrate.

And for an increasingly serious culinary world, Spam’s golden year provided another important treat: plenty of fun.

“There have always been quite a few laughs over Spam . . . in good taste, of course,” said Hormel spokesman Allan Krejci. “I mean, we’ve been kidded by Monty Python and David Letterman. Can you buy that sort of publicity?”

While Hormel’s press kit excerpts Monty Python’s sketch of a couple who visit a restaurant where every dish is made with Spam, one suspects that the meatpacker may have toyed with the idea of test-marketing Letterman’s Spam-on-a-Rope “for those who get hungry in the shower.” Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson has even created the Spamalope, a beast with a suspiciously familiar rectangular body.

Just after 1 p.m. on this warm, sunny Friday, though, things were getting serious in the central atrium of the OakPark Mall, site of the Spam-O-Rama Cookoff. About 350 spectators, some of them wearing the “Cram Your Spam” T-shirts favored by jobless, former union activists protesting the whole event, had gathered in front of J. C. Penney to watch the judges taste Ena Rugg’s broccoli Spam casserole, Ruth Cambern’s cheesy Spam ole and the other eight contending recipes.

“We’re here to wipe the smug smile off the (Hormel backers’) faces,” said Kathy Buck, former financial secretary of United Food and Commercial Workers Local P-9, the group that had organized the strike against Hormel. “This is the Fourth of July, and it just seems like a terrible way to celebrate liberty.”

The cook-off was not advertised nationally, according to Mike Mahoney, publisher of the Austin Daily Herald, co-sponsor of the cook-off. Mahoney thought his paper “. . . might be inundated with thousands and thousands of recipes. We actually received over 300, mostly local, entries.

“I haven’t announced this yet, but I just got a call from CBS,” said Mahoney. “The winner is going to be flown to Washington to appear on CBS’ ‘Nightwatch.’ ”

In addition to talking Spam on national television, the winner would take home a Las Vegas vacation for two--and, yes, a year’s supply of the legendary canned meat.

“We finally figured out how much a year’s supply of Spam is,” Piller said, directing finalist Phyllis House and her Spam eggs au gratin entry to a place at the contestants’ table. “Six cases of 24 cans each. That’s 2.7 cans per week. We’ll adjust the amount if the winner really starts eating a lot of Spam,” Piller said with a smile.

Although nine of the 10 finalists were women, it was the lone male, Jerry Dahlback, a local computer installer and former Hormel employee, who took first prize. His Spam Mexican bake--made from Bisquick, chili, cheese and the requisite potted meat--was the unanimous choice of judges Vonnie Snyder, an Austin nutritionist; Kermit Watts, owner of the Peppermill, a local restaurant; and John Myers, a chef from Austin, Tex.

As Mahoney presented Dahlback with his 144 cans of Spam, about 60 ex-Hormel strikers began chanting “Uncle Sam, not Spam!” and “Cram your Spam!”

Pro-Hormel spectators countered with applause and cheers, as they would all weekend.

After his win, Dahlback, 38, was surrounded by reporters from the national press. “This is really a dream, to have People magazine and CBS interviewing you for doing something so relatively simple. My wife, Kathy, and I and our kids will work on eating as much of the Spam as we can, then give the rest to our church and friends.”

Pride in Product

An Austin native, Dahlback said he “can’t honestly remember a time when I haven’t eaten Spam. I lived in Los Angeles for three years in the early ‘70s, and I’d eat it there, too. I was always proud to see the name Austin on the label.”

The Minnesota Spam-O-Rama cook-off grew out of a similar gustatory contest in Austin, Tex.

“This was our 10th annual Spamarama competition,” said event organizer Theresa Fox. “This year we had 25 professional chefs going at it. Our Texas rules are pretty simple: Your dish better have Spam in it, and you have to actually eat your own creation if the judges ask you to. This discourages any really bizarre concoctions.”

John Myers, who won the Texas cook-off’s Spamerica’s Cup this year for his Spamuccini Alfredo, traveled from his home in Austin, Tex., to judge the Minnesota event.

“This cook-off was a little tame compared to the Texas version,” Myers said. “Our Spamarama lasts all day, we draw about 1,000 spectators, and it’s a real party. There’s plenty of Shiner beer, and we have a Spam Jam with rock bands following the cook-off. After all, it is Texas. And it is Spam.”

Just behind the contestants’ table, on the mall’s central stage, was a display depicting the history of America’s favorite canned luncheon meat. Various Spamorabilia were installed behind Plexiglas panels next to a pair of huge 50s constructed out of 15,868 Spam cans.

Spam got its name in 1937 at a New Year’s Eve party in Austin, Minn. “Ken Daigneau, brother of a Hormel executive, suggested the name Spam ,” Krejci said. “Ken won $100 for his suggestion. From a company standpoint, it was a very good investment. (Spam sales surpassed $170 million last year, according to Hormel.) The SP stands for spiced, and AM for ham.”

Because Spam has an indefinite shelf life once it’s packed, the United States shipped tons of the chopped, molded pork to U.S. troops during World War II. And to many a former GI, it remains a loathsome mystery meat.

A great deal of Spam went to Britain as part of the lend-lease plan.

Remembered in Britain

A British “blitz baby” born in 1940, Los Angeles Times Magazine associate editor Bevis Hillier, remembers Spam as “one of the greater privations of World War II. Freed from its tin, this nasty oleaginous substance looked like a block of soapstone or mutton-fat jade.”

Times staff writer Paul Dean, a grade-school student in London during the war, remembers a different Spam. “I love it. Those cans were our break from whale meat and bangers (sausages). I traded Royal Air Force survival knives, yo-yos and dead German incendiary bombs with American GIs for all the PX Spam I could carry.”

It remains extremely popular today, Hormel said, being consumed at the rate of 3.6 cans per second in the United States. Hawaii leads the nation in per capita consumption, possibly because fresh meat is relatively expensive on the islands, and because of Hawaii’s role as a military port during World War II.

“I’m not quite sure how, but Spam’s become a tradition here,” said June Poma, a member of the Hawaii Nutrition Council and a spokeswoman for Foodland stores, Hawaii’s largest supermarket chain.

“At a recent nutrition council meeting we tried to figure out ways we could get Hawaiians to cut back on Spam and Vienna sausages--they just love those too,” she said with a laugh. “Spam drives nutritionists crazy you know, so much salt and fat. But there’s new low-sodium Spam now; that might help.”

(Spam has frequently been attacked by nutritionists. Last Friday, for instance, the Center for Science in the Public Interest released a report condemning the product for its high fat, salt and preservative content.)

In Los Angeles, it sells “very well among Anglos, but especially well in the Latino community” according to Jerry Whithaus, Hormel sales representative for the Western United States. “Ralphs, Vons, Price Club--that’s where you go if you want to see a lot of Spam.”

At the Irvine Ranch Farmers Market in the Beverly Center, however, Spam’s indefinite shelf life would come in handy. It might take that long just to sell one can, if the store even stocked Spam. “We just don’t handle Spam at all,” said store manager Dennis Bono. “Prime beef, prosciutto--but no Spam.”

Not the case in Austin, Minn.

At Elden’s IGA Foodliner, where the checkers all wore Spam T-shirts last weekend, there was a special promotion on Spam.

Thriving on Spam

Even the winner of Cedar River Days’ five-mile Hog Jog, Chris Harder, an Austin native and a member of the University of Minnesota track team, eats it. “I wouldn’t say I thrive on Spam,” Harder said after the race, “but I have it at least once a week. Almost everyone eats it, but nobody wants to admit it.”

For 99 cents, the local McDonald’s would fry a Spam McMuffin for you. “It’s an Egg McMuffin with Spam instead of Canadian bacon,” said restaurant manager Dave Peterson, “and it’s prepared strictly according to McDonald’s guidelines.”

An alternative breakfast was Spam ‘n’ cakes, eaten alfresco at Horace Austin Park off Main Street. “We expected to stop serving at 11, but we’ll have to serve till noon,” said event co-chairwoman Paula Bunker. “Look at that line of people. There are 150 more at least, all waiting to eat Spam.”

Later in the day, after the Grande Parade, sales would be brisk at the Spam sandwich stand in the park, where an MTV crew taped plump pink squares sizzling on the griddle. “You are what you eat, you know, you are what you eat,” someone said, raising a good laugh from those queued up for a Jack-cheese-and-Spam sandwich and a cold beer.

Last Monday, after the weekend’s celebration had subsided, cook-off winner Dahlback sat in a hotel room in Washington, waiting for a CBS-TV limousine to take him to a 10 a.m. taping of “Nightwatch.” A cake pan filled with his winning Spam Mexican bake was in a cooler somewhere in the hotel. CBS had asked him to prepare the dish ahead and bring it along. “You know, it’s sort of strange taking food on an airplane,” he joked. “I wouldn’t buy a Big Mac in Washington and fly it back to Austin.”

Tired after a tour of the capital the night before, Dahlback said, “This has been a super weekend for me and for Austin, but in a way I’ll be glad when it’s all over. I really miss my family. But if any of the past few days can do something to help locals and outsiders feel better about Austin, to maybe put the negative image of the community (due to the strike) behind us, then it’s all been worth it.”