Spam. Unfiltered.

Because mama loves a back story.

My mom has always loved SPAM®.

She loves it an unusual amount. That’s why SPAM® was a regular on the menu in my house growing up and why I’ve been surprised to learn that many of you did NOT grow up with a SPAM divider in your mom’s recipe box. All I can say…is if you have not enjoyed a can of SPAM® chopped up into scalloped potatoes as a main course, you have probably not seen your little brother lick a casserole dish so clean you that someone accidentally puts it back on the shelf without washing it. And you call that a childhood?

SPAMtatos may be a recipe my mom invented in a pinch because she had six kids to feed in the 60’s, or she may have learned it in home economics class in Cozad High School, Cozad, Nebraska, when the SPAM® brand was in its heyday after starring in WWII.

Why am I bringing this up on July 5, 2024?

Because I JUST LEARNED that the first can of SPAM® was sold on exactly July 5, 1937. 

You know what else was introduced to the world on July 5, 1937?

My mom!

Marian Kay Blades (Jenkins) is celebrating her 87th birthday today, and so is the world’s most famous cube of gelatinous pork shoulder-based mystery meat.

I haven’t eaten SPAM in decades, but you know I can’t resist a good back story and a brand that keeps theirs alive. Check out SPAM’s web site, Museum and Wiki page.

I discovered just this year that my mom and SPAM share a story, and it has rocked the world of the Blades family. After years of struggling to birthday shop for the woman who is impossible to shop for, my sister and I slipped into the SPAM online merch shop and did our birthday shopping.

Allow me to tempt you with some SPAM GIFT SHOP offerings…

Also…

What SPAM Marketplace doesn’t deliver, ETSY does! My daughter bought me these earrings, upcycled from – you guessed it – SPAM can pull tabs!

Sometimes we give my mom fine jewelry like this and sometimes we give her actual SPAM, because that’s what she likes. She’s not alone. Spam is loved in 41 countries on six continents.

It was started by Hormel Foods Corporation to increase the sale of pork shoulder, a cut which did not sell well. It gained popularity worldwide after its use during World War II.

And what about that NAME?! How did that come to be? According to the robust SPAM Museum web site:

The significance of the SPAM® brand name has long been a subject of speculation. One popular belief says it’s derived from the words 'spiced ham.' The real answer is known by only a small circle of former Hormel Foods executives. And probably Nostradamus.

Ken Daigneau, the brother of a company executive, won a $100 prize that year in a competition to name it. Hormel states that the meaning of the name "is known by only a small circle of former Hormel Foods executives," but a popular belief is that is it a contraction of "spiced ham"? or an acronym for "shoulder of pork and ham"?

SPAM® became a ubiquitous part of the WWII U.S. soldier's diet and referred to as "ham that didn't pass its physical", "meatloaf without basic training", and "Special Army Meat".

Now…if you tuned in NOT for the SPAM® meat story, but for the spam-in-your-inbox origin story…

…if you don’t care so much about canned fatty meat but you’re dying to know why the emails from a bitcoin peddling Nigerian prince are called ‘spam’, the history is well documented. Here it is, unfiltered, direct from AI:

“The term "spam" for unwanted or junk email originates from a Monty Python sketch. In the 1970 sketch from the British television show "Monty Python's Flying Circus," a group of diners in a restaurant is unable to order anything without having spam (the canned meat product) included in their meal, regardless of their preferences. The incessant repetition of the word "spam" by the waitress, coupled with a group of Vikings singing a chorus of "Spam, Spam, Spam," overwhelmed the conversation and drowned out other speech.

This sketch illustrated the idea of something repetitive, unavoidable, and overwhelming, which perfectly captured the nature of unwanted, unsolicited emails. Early internet users and developers adopted the term to describe the flood of unsolicited messages that would inundate email inboxes, just as the Vikings' chorus drowned out everything else in the sketch.

Thus, "spam" became the term for these unwanted electronic communications due to its connotation of being repetitive, annoying, and hard to avoid.”

Raise your hand in the comments if you knew this!

Raise your hand if you came here for stARTistic takeaways and are hoping I’ll fortify this meal with SOMETHING you can use.

Yep. Here’s what we can learn from my stARTistic mom and SPAM® on their birthdays: To be our best stARTistic selves, we should…

1. Ponder and appreciate the ways earlier generations innovated, starting at home. Stories about WWII rationing, repurposing and squeezing the value from every cut of meat help wire us to look for ideas in waste and excess.

2. Get curious about names and entomology. Discovering where words originated flexes our open mindedness and innovation muscles.

3. Get simple. If you make mystery meat, keep find a way to keep it “simple” in the ingredients list. Sodium nitrate has never looked so yummy!

4. Leverage folklore (aka, harmless conspiracy theories.) Hormel didn’t let 40 “confirmed hunter reports” of Bigfoot stealing their SPAM go to waste. They made it into a post card, my go-to under-a-dollar conversation starter.

Here’s the 5th of July story I’m getting at: The best creations, innovations and inventions have delicious journeys to celebrate, and I’m entertained by my mom’s SPAM birthday coincidence.

But her 87th birthday isn’t her most exciting celebration on the calendar this season.

No, no, no…Mom is ALSO celebrating her 70th high school graduation with the Cozad Haymakers in Cozad, Nebraska, this September.

Yes, I will be there with the whole gang. Here she is (top right) with her whole gang in 1954!

I won’t miss this event, because I’m afraid to miss ANY stories.

You see, our moms’ back stories don’t show up in our inboxes as tidy, titled, searchable Wiki pages. They kinda leak out. And we have to set traps for them (not unlike like a SPAM filter.)

I remember nosing around in my mom’s drawers when I was 12 and finding a yellowed newspaper clipping titled “Inkins’ by Jenkins” by Marian Jenkins, my mom’s maiden name. I had no idea my mom had HER OWN COLUMN in a newspaper. She was a typesetter. Mom learned the state-of-the art linotype technology when she was 17. I knew that. I’d heard that story lots of times. But my mom, who was 17 when she graduated high school, a writer? I saw it and then I forgot it for decades.

Talking to her about life at a small-town newspaper is something that still makes her light up. She fondly remembers working for innovative news people including, are you ready – PAUL HARVEY! But not THAT Paul Harvey. It wasn’t the famous “and now for the REST OF THE STORY Paul Harvey. It was just some guy named Paul Harvey. She always gets us with that one.

No doubt about it, my mom is a stARTist. She has started people, projects, businesses, newspaper columns, recipes and stuff we’ll never know about.

So, happy birthday, Marian Kay Jenkins! Happy birthday, SPAM®! Eighty seven is a lot of years, but not enough! You’re a stARTistic inspiration to us all.

Me and my mom in 1958 and more recently.

P.S. My mom texted me this week to tell me she’s ready to learn I-Pad technology and to ask what model she should buy. She and her partner still work every day running Kramer’s Best Antique Improver, a natural wood product. She’s as stARTistic as ever! (If you have any antiques, you should check this stuff out!)

P.S.S. Since I have you here talking about Paul Harvey the day after the 4th of July, 2024, you might want to check out one of his most famous broadcasts, which seems kind of timely: If I Were the Devil.