And I'm not talking about the stuff in your email box. We're talking the original Spam, the original mystery meat, that you remember from camping trips as a kid. I think I had my fill of Spam as a kid when we crammed a family of five plus a dog into our little sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay. It could last forever so it always made it into storage for those summer trips to the Eastern Shore. Somehow it provided an incentive to catch more crabs while chicken-necking along the piers. Anything but Spam...anything.
The economy is in tatters and, for millions of people, the future is uncertain. But for some employees at the Hormel Foods Corporation plant here, times have never been better. They are working at a furious pace and piling up all the overtime they want.
The workers make Spam, perhaps the emblematic hard-times food in the American pantry.
Through war and recession, Americans have turned to the glistening canned product from Hormel as a way to save money while still putting something that resembles meat on the table. Now, in a sign of the times, it is happening again, and Hormel is cranking out as much Spam as its workers can produce.
In a factory that abuts Interstate 90, two shifts of workers have been making Spam seven days a week since July, and they have been told that the relentless work schedule will continue indefinitely.
Spam, a gelatinous 12-ounce rectangle of spiced ham and pork, may be among the world’s most maligned foods, dismissed as inedible by food elites and skewered by comedians who have offered smart-alecky theories on its name (one G-rated example: Something Posing As Meat).
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