It's Called Spam

by CM Kelly

“Back in the day ….”I realize that such an opening leads one to some preconceived conclusion about what will follow, so my challenge is to shake up your preconceived thought with a light, maybe funny, and somewhat educational story.

In the late 1960s, we moved from a 3-bedroom apartment in Scranton, PA to a farmhouse built in the 1800s on a dirt road, just a few miles outside of town. For some unknown reason living on a paved versus dirt road was a differentiator in one’s social standing. I never knew why, but in those years, it made sense. Apparently, in the 1950s or thereabouts, the farmhouse was converted into a hunting cabin or club, thus it had the modern conveniences of electricity and indoor plumbing. When we moved in, the house underwent a major renovation — or more of an overhaul. New roof, windows, wiring, plumbing, floors, furnace, well, septic system, the works.

With the farmhouse came a few acres of land, more than enough room to allow the nine of us with space to play kickball, baseball, and football. At one point our dad put up a crude basketball court made from a pair of four-by-fours and a piece of plywood. The combo grass-dirt court was easy on falls but made dribbling quite a challenge. The house and the land came complete with a list of never-ending chores, ranging from cutting grass to painting fences, trimming trees and bushes to hand digging the basement, the latter being a story itself.

With open fields on all sides, a small creek in the backyard, two ponds just a stones throw away, and tall pine trees in the front yard, this old farmhouse was the idyllic place to raise a family of nine children. With great pride, our mother declared, “We live on Windrift Acres.” I recall how proudly she put up a hand-painted sign on the corner pine tree stating so.

I don’t know if it was my dad’s or mom’s idea, but right after we bought the farmhouse, we constructed a 20x15 foot family room addition with tall windows overlooking the creek and ponds and a fireplace at one end. The room, of course, was trimmed in 1960s wood paneling, providing our Irish clan of 11 much-needed elbow room. I can safely say that this room was pretty much built with child labor. There would be many projects at this homestead that didn’t just build muscles, but also character. Since the kitchen was rather small, the family room became the focal point of the household because it contained the one TV we owned.

In Archie Bunker fashion, my father had his favorite chair right in front of the TV (for Gen X and Millennials, think of Sheldon’s spot from the Big Bang Theory). This family room brought us together for the nightly, post-dinner tradition of watching TV shows. Of course, living in a remote area meant we were lucky to get one TV station, so our viewing choices weren’t just limited; they didn’t exist. My father initiated the original channel surfing by having one of us 6 boys climb up on the roof and turn the antenna until a station was found.

To complete the setting, we were a family of modest financial means, strong in character and honesty but always light with the dollars. So, on to the main topic: “It’s called SPAM.” Although the family room was the center of activity, we had all our meals in the kitchen. For such a large family, I don’t know how my mom got by with just a basic stove with one oven and a refrigerator the size you’d find today in a garage. No microwave or dishwasher, just a well-used two-slice toaster. Due to the size of the kitchen and because of our financial condition, the kitchen table was a picnic table we moved from the porch, the old wooden kind you would find in a park. My mother hated it. The kitchen door was the main entrance to the house, and the picnic table was the first thing any visitor would see, a telltale sign of our economic standing.

With nine children, mealtime at our house looked more like a cafeteria than a homey Norman Rockwell painting. Breakfast was a procession of children running through the process of taking showers, brushing their teeth, checking the dryer for clean clothes, and finding lost shoes, or coats. Most of us would wolf down a bowl of cereal while others would grab a few pieces of toast; of course, they had to have cinnamon sugar on top. of them. We were essentially on our own while our mom was busy making the batches of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for our lunches. The process was loosely choreographed to get the troops to the front gate before the school bus arrived. Only on Sunday did breakfast differ. Because we were all headed to the same Mass, it was the only time we had Mom and Dad join us for breakfast. Mom would cook Dad his eggs and bacon while the rest of us did the cereal/toast routine. Once in a great while, Mom would make scrambled eggs for the children, a treat generally reserved for holidays or birthdays.

Lunches were the standard peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sometimes just peanut butter or just jelly, but never cold cuts with cheese. I don’t recall anything else in the brown paper bags we took to school for 12 years, but we might have the occasional cupcake or celery sticks. When we got older and attended high school, we were allowed to buy a cafeteria lunch once per week. What a treat that was. I don’t remember the price of the cafeteria food, but I do recall a milk carton costing six cents and an ice cream sandwich a dime.

Dinners were less confusing than breakfast. During the week and on Saturdays, most of the nine were either at a sporting event, Scouts, or catechism classes. Thus, the “school night” seating around the picnic table was rarely maxed out. Those of us getting home after 6:00 p.m. were usually faced with dried-out, overcooked leftovers. Sunday was more traditional, with the whole household sitting down for a chicken dinner with vegetables and mashed potatoes. Of course, all dinners started with reciting Grace; we sat up straight, chewed with our mouths closed, spoke when spoken to, and asked to be excused from the table.

Mom did have her routine: Sunday was almost always a chicken dinner, Wednesday was spaghetti night, Friday was either pizza or a tuna noodle casserole (never meat on a Friday), and Saturday was hamburgers with oven-baked French-fries. As you can surmise, our mother did not do elaborate or detailed cooking; how could she with such a large crew and a two to three-hour serving window?

I remember some aspects of dinner at Windrift Acres that are noteworthy, like having scrambled eggs with cut-up hotdogs for dinner, opening can after can of apple sauce, and boiling potatoes in what resembled a five-gallon painter’s bucket and the mountain of potato skins that came with it. One staple in almost every meal...a taste and image that still runs a cold shiver down my spine...was the yellow wax beans heaped on our plates.

We never had “fancy” meals growing up. Thanksgiving Day turkey and Christmas Day ham were once-a-year events, and those dinners, in many ways, did resemble a Norman Rockwell painting. Funny side note: In the 1970s, with the skyrocketing prices of beef there was a nationwide beef embargo, well this didn’t impact my family. The only red meat we had was the lowest-grade hamburger or something called a cube steak.

The one dinner I painfully remember was when Mom cooked up some pan-fried canned ham (i.e., SPAM) and mashed potatoes with those yellow beans. In the 1970s, canned hams were the “in thing.” Mom convinced us, or at least me, that the canned ham was akin to a Christmas Day ham.

Years later, while in college, I had breakfast in a diner with a friend. I ordered fried ham and scrambled eggs special. With just one bite, I recognized the ham on my plate. I mentioned to my friend sitting in the booth with me that this restaurant served the expensive fried ham my mother served us at home. He immediately broke into a burst of deep, prolonged laughter and told me that the fried ham next to my eggs was fried SPAM. He explained what he thought SPAM was made of, which I won’t repeat here.

A range of emotions went through me. First, I was embarrassed by my social standing for thinking that SPAM was an expensive ham. Yes, even at college I was still the green hick raised on a dirt road in the mountains of Pennsylvania.

The second, more powerful emotion was that my mom duped me, a concept I couldn’t accept. While growing up, our mother repeatedly told us, “You’re as good as any of those other children, no matter what they say, think, or wear.” Whether we wore hand-me-down clothes, hitchhiked to and from events, drove in outdated-rusted cars, or had to get a paying job as soon as we got our driving learner’s permit, our mother consistently drove into us, that people with money were no better than me, my brothers or sisters. She established a core value that character matters the most, not what you wear, what you drive, the size of your home, or how much money you have.

Getting over that emotional disappointment took a while, but in the end, I had to admit that Mom duped me. SPAM was not a fancy, expensive, imported ham. I’ve rationalized this memory by believing that my ever-optimistic mother was just making lemonade out of lemons.

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True Story Contest contest entry

I lack professional writing experience. I hated English and literature classes. My passion has always been engineering, with a focus on numbers, formulas, equations, and algorithms. Thus the two Engineering Degrees. Expect straightforward prose; you won't find complex vocabulary or many four-syllable words. As the 4th of 9, raised in an abandoned farmhouse on a dirt road, there's a degree of wonderment, aka Forrest Gump, weaved throughout these stories, which reflects my, "Hick from the Sticks", personality. All of my stories are based on actual events, of course with some embellishment.

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Can a mother dupe her own son?

It's Called Spam

by CM Kelly

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