Spam

I remember Spam™ but as a food that Mom liked and we boys tried to avoid. Avoidance wasn’t always possible. Mom always shopped at the Base Post Exchange (PX) for food. I remember those trips, especially when I was a little older.

We went to the base in our station wagon, Mom and me and my three small brothers. I remember Barry about five, Dave about three and Tim two. That would make me nine or ten. Mom would get two carts and put Tim in the seat of one of them. She put Dave into the seat of the other. Barry sometimes sat in the cart itself, but mostly Mom required him to just walk next to one of the carts and hang on. He wasn’t supposed to let go, and he usually didn’t. I pushed one cart and Mom pushed the other. I had to make sure that Dave and Barry didn't do anything wrong - though Dave was pretty well secured and Barry came back every time he wandered away. He was careful that Mom didn't see him for the wrath of Mom was always to be avoided.

The goal was to fill the carts and spend less than we had. Mom filled the carts with the least expensive food that the PX had. That meant a lot of Spam™.

She made fried Spam™ (which I still like, actually) and we ate it at breakfast with eggs or at dinner with Mac and Cheese (another inexpensive item).

Mom liked Spam™ sandwiches – ugh! Seriously, she simply sliced the Spam™ directly from the can, put it on white bread with some mayo and maybe a slice of tomato. This sandwich was one of her favorite travel items actually. We shuddered when we stopped for lunch. Given the opportunity we simply skipped the Spam™ and simply ate the bread.

When we were in Hawaii I discovered that Spam™ is the state food. I don’t get that, but okay. I prefer pineapple. Mom would probably eat the pineapple with Spam™. Maybe she was part Hawaiian and forgot to tell us.

Spam has an entirely different meaning now. It has to do with all the (usually) automated crap that gets tagged onto a blog as comments. About two weeks ago I turned off the verification method for posting blog comments on my blog. The method is a bit cumbersome, and actually tripped me up a few times. I can’t always prove I’m fully human, I suppose.

I have had seventeen spam comments posted since then. Blogger is pretty good about identifying the spam comments and moves them to a special folder, but it doesn’t catch them all. I have to step in and manage those that slip through.

I turned the verification back on, and to all the real human people that I know out there, I’m sorry. To all the spammers, autobots that you are, try somewhere else now.