Hello and welcome. My name is Merle Haugland. I'm sixty-four, retired from thirty-one years with the county highway department, and I live in Albert Lea, Minnesota, which is just down Interstate 90 from Austin, which as every Spam fan knows is where the stuff comes from. On a good summer night with the wind right, I like to think I can smell it cooking. My wife Ardis says that's the neighbor's grill.

Folks laugh at Spam. I know they do. I've heard every joke. But I'll tell you what: in sixty-four years it has never once let me down, never gone bad in the cupboard, and never cost more than I had in my pocket. You can't say that about many things, and you certainly can't say it about my '74 Pontiac.

My granddaughter Kirsten built me this page last Christmas so I'd "quit telling the same Spam stories at dinner." Now I tell them to the whole world. She didn't think that through.

SPAM FACTS I CAN VOUCH FOR

• Spam is made by Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota. It came out in 1937.
• The name came out of a contest. The man who thought it up won a hundred dollars. Best hundred dollars anybody ever spent, if you ask me.
• What does "Spam" stand for? The company has never really said. Most people guess "spiced ham." Ardis says it stands for "Something Placed Around Merle." She thinks she's funny.
• What's in it? Read the can: pork with ham, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite. That's the whole list. Some of the fancy stuff at the deli has a longer list than that.
• During World War II it was shipped overseas by the millions of pounds to feed our soldiers and our allies. That's how it caught on in Hawaii, Guam, and all over the Pacific, where folks still love it more than anybody. Hawaii eats more Spam per person than any state in the Union.
• There's a Lite version now, too. It's fine. I'm a regular man myself.
• And no, this page has nothing to do with junk e-mail. That's a different spam, and frankly I think it's a shame they dragged the name into it.

MY LIFE IN SPAM

SPAM IN THE MOVIES, SORT OF

My son-in-law insists I mention the old English comedy sketch where everything on the diner menu comes with Spam and a table of Vikings breaks into song about it. I've seen it. I laughed. I'd also like to point out that the Spam was the only thing on that menu anybody wanted.

SPAM HAIKU

Kirsten tells me that people on the Internet write little Japanese poems about Spam, seventeen syllables apiece. I counted on my fingers and wrote three of my own:

>> MERLE'S SPAM RECIPES <<
fried Spam and eggs, Ardis's hotdish, Leimomi's musubi, and more