Spam, The Hawaiians, And my Dead Father
By: Maxwell Mccloud
Tags: Spam, Parenthood, History, Family, Fatherhood

“The army brought spam to the Hawaiians back in the World War Two, my dad tells me. “The Hawaiians loved it and started to get fat because they ate so much of it. Hawaiians used to be thin people and they became one of the fattest people after the GI’s brough over all that spam”. He says this while scarfing down a heaping plate of spam cubes with scrambled eggs. He tells me this story every time he makes Spam which was anytime he was tasked with feeding me breakfast.

Photo of the author’s lunch.

My dad would take the whole brick of spam from the can and put it on a cutting board and cut it into quarter inch slices. Then he’d throw it on a very hot pan that was beginning to smoke creating loud sizzling and popping. As the pork fried he’d peek underneath random slices to see how brown they were and when they were right on the edge of being too burnt he would flip them. A few minutes on the other side and he would transfer the hot slices to a plate, grab a fork and steak knife and cut the slices into cubes. Then he’d crack three or four eggs in the pan and start scrambling them picking up fleks of burnt spam residue left in the pan. Once the eggs were a bit over cooked he’d dump them on the plate next to the little mound of spam cubes and hand it to me so I could apply a generous layer of ketchup.

That’s the way he did it and it’s the way I do it now and it’s what I’ll pass on to my children.

My dad’s dead now for a little over six years and I don’t think of him often but I can’t think of spam without his spirit flooding back into me. So many memories about waiting for my Spam to be nicely burnt and cut into cubes. Listening to the story of the Hawaiians and the army. When I get the aroma of spam frying on a hot pan no matter where I am, it brings back good times we had there in the kitchen. I think that’s why I like Spam as much as I do.

I eat plenty of spam and eggs these days despite my doctor’s urging that I cut way back. I don’t make it for breakfast much however. I mostly eat it randomly in the mid-afternoon when the morning news ends and the Jerry Springer show begins. I sit down on the couch and eat from the plate on my lap and think about those Hawaiians and how they must have been so jazzed when spam first became available. They must have been saying things to each other like, “ Have you tried this shit called Spam? Oh my God it’s awesome!” Apparently they were mostly thin before spam came into their life. It’s amazing to think that this one food product has such power to fatten. I wonder how much fatter I’m getting with every bite, pinching my man tits while cramming down greasy bite after greasy bite of glorious spam. I love the way Spam bursts and oozes with salty oil. I don’t think I could ever give it up. I don’t care how big my muffin top gets.

I attended a party once in Los Angeles. I didn’t know the owner of the house I was at but he or she must have been very wealthy because it was a big fancy house with tons of furniture that looked weathered and distressed but in that really expensive way. There was a huge room I wandered into that had an entire wall dedicated to books from floor to ceiling. I picked out a book and it was titled “Before Spam” and it was filled with before and after pictures of the hawaiian people showing how much spam had affected the population after World War Two. There was also a lot of health statistics in there too about things like heart disease and diabetes. I put the book back on the shelf and thought of my dad and started to chuckle. I wish I could call him and tell him what I’d found. He would have loved it. He would have had a totally predictable response like “I told you about that a long time ago”. I would have said, “No you didn’t I read that in a National Geographic years ago”, just to piss him off, and he would be pissed off and say something like, “Oh that’s horse shit! I told you about the Hawaiians and getting fat from Spam every time we had Spam.” which of course is true but I would still pretend I heard it somewhere else. Then he’d say something genuinely mean like, “You must have shit for brains. No wonder you can’t hold a decent job.” Then I would get off the phone in a rage and not speak to him for several months.

But yeah, Spam reminds me of my dear old dad. My Jesus look out for him on the other side.