Meat Me At The Museum
You can't make this stuff up.
Today's Wall Street Journal profiles the Spam Museum. Yes, you read correctly. The Spam Museum.
According to the WSJ's Michael Judge, who grew up about an hour's drive from Austin, Minnesota's Spam Boulevard, where the 16,500 square-foot facility is situated:
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."
And, if you decide to make the roadtrip, there is loads of fun in store. Your "Spambassador" (I'm not kidding) will show you the wonders of the Wall of Spam comprised of 3500 cans of the meat product - enough to feed a single human (albiet with no tastebuds) for 10 years. You'll also get to see a state-of-the-art 42-seat theater, take part in a high-tech interactive Spam Exam, and look up to behold an impressive conveyor belt that keeps some 800 cans of Spam forever circling overhead.
Sounds grand, doesn't it? Well, that's not all:
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 Cafe," 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.
I have a strange feeling that Dr. Biggles is packing his family into the car right now, Mapquest directions to Minnesota in hand, to make his way to Spam Boulevard...