When SPAM Saved an Alaskan Pilot's Life

We are near Chicago now. En route from the West, highway dazed, we spied the SPAM Museum in Minnesota and stopped. Not because we are frivolous people, and decidedly not because I am on a pilgrimage of praise. If I were to praise SPAM it would go something like this: "I thank you Spam that your global ad campaigns have not penetrated the walls of my kitchen---beyond breakfast." 

Or---I thank you Spam for feeding our troops during WW2 (but your time is up, Bub!)

The stats on this meat-ish canned contrivance are astonishing. And, their global reach.

Did you know there are more than a dozen flavors of spam? Cheese Spam, anyone? Garlic Spam?

Let me state my feelings straight out: I hate SPAM. I scorn SPAM. Despite my subtle feelings,  I have been related to SPAM now for almost 40 years. I am related to it through my husband, a true SPAM fan, who serves it occasionally to his family for breakfast, and secondly, among the 50 states, Alaska and Hawaii, per capita, are the highest consumers of SPAM. (Because many Alaskan villages and fish camps had no refrigeration.)

AND---I have my own SPAM story to share.

Years ago, I was flying from Anchorage to Seattle and sat by a friendly man.  He was the Pacific NW sales rep for Hormel meats (the maker of, you know . .. ). He had been at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer manning the SPAM booth and presiding over the Alaska SPAM bake-off. While sharing this fascinating information, to my surprise, he reached under the seat and pulled out a SPAM cookbook and gave it to me. Clearly he had no idea who  he was sitting next to: a woman raised on whole wheat flour, soybeans, blackstrap molasses and goat milk. And someone who could have rattled off all that was seriously wrong with SPAM at age 11. But I am not a total snob. I took the cookbook graciously (also recognizing a possible opportunity for satire at some future date.) 

But the real meat of our conversation was a story, a testimony, actually. At that state fair, a man had approached his booth with a gleam in his eye: “SPAM saved my life,” he started. The story went something like this. He was a bush pilot in the interior of Alaska. That winter he was flying between remote villages when his plane malfunctioned. He crash-landed on the tundra, in the middle of forty-below zero God-forsaken nowhere.

What would he do? How would he survive? He did have a survival box, and in it was-you know what. But you can’t eat meat at forty below. Forty below turns meat into rock-ice. But----

“I opened that can, and would’ja believe at forty below I could slice that stuff? Yep! Forty below and SPAM still slices!  It saved my life!”  the sales rep said that he said.

I joined in my seatmate’s excitement, mentally filling in the rest of the story, which was, of course, that SPAM slices at forty below precisely because----it’s not meat. It’s mostly lard.

But I’m happy for that pilot. I’m happy for that sales rep who probably secretly longed to “make a difference” in the world, and maybe now he had, in some remote, tangential way.

This is my story this week from life on the road. But I want to feed you more than SPAM. I want to end with a blessing. I want to bless you as I was blessed this week after teaching two intensive writing workshops in Wisconsin. A beautiful writer from our group sent this Psalm (150):

“Hallelujah!

Thank God! Pray to Him by name! 

Tell everyone you meet what he has done!

Sing him songs, belt out hymns,

translate his wonders into music!

Honor His holy name with Hallelujahs,

You who seek God. Live a happy life!

Can we do this---Dare a "Hallelujah"!  "Tell everyone you meet what He has done"? Can we Dare to live a happy life!!??

I'll be filling my mouth with SPAM this week (Duncan bought 5 cans of it!!) ----AND with Praise! 

 BOTH will save our lives----even at forty below.