Jolly Green Giant SPAM-Burger?

On Tuesday, September 11th, we drove into southern Minnesota. After stopping at a visitor center, we headed straight for Blue Earth and the Jolly Green Giant. Blue Earth is a tiny town whose main industry centers around canning corn and peas for the Green Giant company. With free(!) camping for travelers at the town's fairgrounds, ostensibly to encourage spending at one or more of their numerous antique and gift shops, we took advantage. We opted to hunker down for the evening in the strong wind after a day of battling the steering wheel against it. We did, however, make sure to get some pictures of the Jolly Green Giant, a 60-foot statue just off the highway next to a Dairy Queen. Rumor has it that a related museum can be found downtown, but we arrived too late (and too tired) to visit it. After a nice dinner in the RV, we watched several episodes of Downton Abbey completely alone in the campground area of the fairgrounds. Nice.

In front of the Hormel plant, Austin, Minnesota

In the morning, we headed straight for the...you guessed it...SPAM Museum. About an hour east of Blue Earth is the slightly larger town of Austin, Minnesota, whose entire population must work in one of the numerous buildings operated by the Hormel Company, or at least that's what we figured. We drove past the Hormel plant, the Hormel Medical Research Center and a couple of other Hormel buildings and found the SPAM Museum. Upon entering, we were greeted by a friendly lady who handed us a museum guide shaped like a can of SPAM, complete with 'nutrition facts' on the back side.

S-Pam in a giant SPAM can...
we knew it would come to this.

We entered the museum under a display of 3,500 empty SPAM cans, said to be enough to feed one person every day for more than 10 years. Yikes. That's a lot of SPAM. We were herded into a small theater where we watched a pork-packed showing of  'SPAM: A Love Story', a short film about all things SPAM. We learned of the SPAMettes, a quartet of women without shame or dignity who have adapted several 50s tunes to include Spam, such as "Mr. SPAM-man...Bring Me Some SPAM" and the like. It was hilarious.

A 25 sq ft slice of SPAM Classic
at the center of this sandwich beaut...
enough for 4,800 SPAMburgers!

A SPAM ad from the 30s

Outside the theater, the huge pieces of a gigantic SPAMburger hung from the ceiling next to a 17-1/2 foot spatula stuck to the wall. You can't make this stuff up. Further into the museum, we found everything from puppets mimicking a talk show (introducing important characters to SPAM's past), to a letter from President Eisenhower congratulating the company's 75th anniversary. We learned that obscene amounts of SPAM were sent overseas to feed American soldiers during WWII. Through the Lend-Lease program Soviet soldiers also received SPAM and so did British troops. Wow. (Did too much SPAM start the Cold War after the end of WWII?!?)

S-Pam as a SPAM canner

In another area I tried my hand at canning little pink beanbags of 'SPAM' in a time trial against the factory's output. In the time it took me to throw 6 pink SPAM beanbags into the cans, put a lid on them, 'cook' them, slip the label sleeve on and slap them into the crate, over 650 cans of SPAM were produced in the factory. According to the museum, some 44,000 cans of SPAM are produced every hour. I just want to know who's eating it in quantities to justify that kind of output. Wowza. Oddly, Hawaii has the highest per capita consumption of SPAM in the U.S. And we saw some odd Korean commercials suggesting SPAM's use in a variety of dishes, not the least alarming of which was SPAM sushi. That's just gross.

George Burns and Gracie Allen
hawking SPAM in the 40s

But how fun and pork-filled! We totally loved the SPAM Museum even if neither of us totally loves SPAM. Or even likes it. Or would even buy it even in the case of a total collapse of the world's food supply as we know it. Maybe. Nonetheless, we had a laugh going to a museum with such a great sense of humor about its meaty self. Ha!

A SPAM plea to American wallets
in the 70s

According to the brochure, the museum is good for us. It contains (and I quote) the following ingredients: SPAM products. History. Water. Nostalgia. Carpet. A Viking. Chairs. Facts. Displays. Old cans. Audio visual exhibits. Shopping carts. A letter from Eisenhower. Interactive kiosks. A conveyor belt. Advertising. A wagon. A tent. A puppet show. Glass. An old refrigerator. A game show. Rope. A light show. Fake pork chops. A map. Statues. A shop. Subliminal pigs in cloud murals. Wooden crates. Air. Truth. Serving size: 16,500 square feet

How could we possibly top the goofiness of a SPAM Museum? Couldn't be done. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the RV giggling about the museum and its silly exhibits. What fun!