SPAM Received

The Stumbling Brother finally received his SPAM gift set all the way from Korea. It was quite a long haul for this case of SPAM. First of all, I decided it would be easy to carry it home from the store instead of taking a taxi. My arm was about 2 inches longer by the time I arrived home that night. Next, I tried to convince The Stumbling Parents to bring "some SPAM" back home for their son. They agreed until they saw the size of the gift set - it was bigger than their suitcase! Finally I took it with me on my business trip last month to Hawaii. But not before I spent several hours on the internet and telephone with various Government agencies trying to learn if it was legal to bring SPAM into the country. Finally a kind doctor at the Department of Agriculture (or was it Food and Drug Adminstration?) told me that canned pork was okay, but canned beef would be a problem.

So, for the first time ever, I checked the "I am carrying meat into the country" box on the customs form when I arrived in Honolulu. The clerk asked me to show them the meat, which I did. He got a good laugh at all that SPAM. He opened up a file cabinet with over a hundred books of regulations, but when I explained my various phone calls with the USDA, he agreed that SPAM should be no problem and let me go. Whew... I was sweating for awhile there.





The last leg of the journey was by UPS Ground (from Hawaii????), where it encountered a train delay somewhere en-route from Canada to Tennessee. CANADA??? Why was my package in Canada in the first place? I am so confused. So this SPAM gift set has gone from Seoul South Korea to the Hawaiian Islands to Ontario Canada and finally to Alabama. To The Stumbling Brother... Bon Appetite!