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Spamming it up Photos by Bob Pennell Jason Cox, 22, left, provided the funds and Jason Jermain, 24, supplied the van for their entry into the Shady Cove Spam Festival parade Saturday. The duo hoped to snag the $1,000 top prize. Shady Cove Spam Fest gets to meat of the matter By BILL VARBLE SHADY COVE -- Jason Jermain's 1962 Volkswagen van is done up like a big can of Spam. It's blue, with the registered trademark name in big yellow letters. A serving suggestion on the can/van's left side depicts a pink slice of canned meat coming off a loaf. There's a giant papier mache fork stuck to the van's right side and a bar code on the engine compartment door in back. But the Spam can/van's piece de resistance is its top, where a big papier mache can top is peeling back to reveal what appears to be a pink, gelatinous substance. Yes, it's gooey. "Haven't you ever opened a can of Spam before?" Jermain asks. Spam Queen Charlotte Boehm carries the royal scepter -- a chunk of Spam on a stick. Welcome to the Spam Festival. A two-day shindig dedicated to the canned meat with which Americans had a love-hate relationship during World War II, it's also an art festival and promotion for Upper Rogue area merchants. Hey, it may be a canned meat product, but it's also an anagram -- "Special People Are Motivated (to make the year 2000 a bright spirit of hope!)." The Spam Festival continues from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. today with a breakfast, cowboy church, Indian spirit drumming, art exhibits, antique cars and music. And lots of canned meat. "We're serving 400 pounds of Spam," 1999 Spam Queen Charlotte Boehm says before Saturday's Spam parade. In her day job, Boehm is an owner of the Two Pines Smokehouse in Shady Cove. Her majesty gestures with the royal scepter, a chunk of Spam on a stick, from the royal throne, the back seat of a jonquil yellow 1960 Studebaker Lark. Jermain, 24, who works part-time in a cabinet shop, says he used acrylics, an air brush and a spray painter and had help from pal Jason Cox, 22, in creating the Spammobile. The lure? A $1,000 first prize put up by Shady Cove businessman Ron Boehm. "It ain't gonna take no special efforts to wash it off," Jermain says of the paint job. Some 50 entries were expected for the parade. In the staging area next to a flea market, there's a flatbed smokehouse with a picnic table and a grill for you-know-what. There are dancing Spam cans from Shady Cove Middle School. And there are the Y2K Doctors, who pass out what they say is a Y2K computer replacement chip -- a potato chip in a bag. Rehearsing along the road is a Spam-ized version of The Village People, the macho disco singing group. Dressed as a construction worker, a cop, a cowgirl and a sailor, the four Eagle Point High School students (plus conductor Adam Daniels) sing a Weird Al Yankovic song about Spam as they hand-sign: S-P-A-M. "I'm a vegetarian," says the "sailor," K.C. Cavin. "But if I weren't, I'm sure I'd love to eat chicken lips and pigs' feet." "Spam is delicious and nutritious," says Jonah Kopp, who's portraying the construction-worker Village person. "A tasty treat." Alongside Highway 62 at the tent city that's a sort of Spam Central for the weekend, art, jewelry, food booths and a beer garden vie for business. Joe Kleemann of Indian Lake is buying a double Spamburger. "We're going to cut it into four pieces and give it to the family and see if anybody dies," he says. Amy Shaw, of Eagle Point, says the burger booth she's working in sold a lot of hamburgers Friday night, but only three or four Spamburgers. "People would say, `Do you have any real hamburgers?"' Taste, of course, is relative. "I've eaten it a few times," Jason Jermain says as he gets ready to fire up the Spam can/van for the parade. "I take it camping. It tastes like ham. It's just being in a can that people don't like." Jermain won't reveal the secret ingredient that put the fat in the mystery stuff that appears to be inside the top of the van/can. "Let's just say it comes from a very large can." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA