Author: Eric Dregni

Maybe they were emboldened by the frank talk of Dick Cheney. Or maybe they’re feeling a little overextended by their thrilling new store in Bloomington, which finally opened in mid-July. Maybe they just aren’t comfortable with their English yet. But Ikea, the upscale Swedish company that sells lots of unassembled Scandinavian furniture, has recently seemed a bit irritable.

On bus shelters in Norway, Ikea has posted ads of supermodels wearing blank expressions and urbane duds. They look preoccupied with the complexities of the good life, lounging among their minimalist home furnishings. Then there is an uncivil invitation spray-painted beside the company’s yellow logo. It says, “Screw Yourself.”

At first, I thought this graffiti must be the work of witty Norske vandals expressing their opposition to this corporate giant from the repugnant nation of Sweden. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the job was perfectly uniform—as if it had been produced by the same computer that produced the rest of the poster. Oi! No jaded rocker did this. It was Ikea itself, apparently warning its customers of the perils of its wares.

I rang up Ikea in Oslo to ask if they understood what their ad campaign meant to Anglophones. The customer service representative responded in perfect English. “We’ve had many complaints about that. What we meant was ‘build-it-yourself.’ I don’t think that the advertisers understood the other meaning when they made the posters.”

My Norwegian friend Knut didn’t buy it. “Oh, they knew what they were doing. They wanted to appeal to a younger audience, so they used American slang.” Even so, this bizarre double—or triple—entendre is surprising in a country where most people speak nearly flawless English.

Ikea’s line that it was a simple mistranslation also seemed suspicious, because the word skrue (screw) in Norwegian can mean “crazy old kook.” (Norwegians, for example, know Disney’s Uncle Scrooge as Onkel Skrue.) What kind of company would want to associate itself with that old pinchpenny?
Perhaps the ad was meant to revive the friendly rivalry between Sweden and Norway. “See the yellow and blue? That’s very bad for Norway because it’s the Swedish colors!” joked Norwegian banker Arne Wahlstrøm, while pointing at the local Ikea store. “We don’t shop there,” he added. “It’s mostly for students and young people.”

Although they are not backing off in Norway, it’s not likely that Ikea will bring this edgy campaign to the States. At least not before Häagen-Dazs rolls out its “Eat Me!” concept.
—Eric Dregni

Growing up in Minnesota, I was always taught that Scandinavian society was some sort of utopian system that helps everyone. The taxes were high, but the payoff was the world’s highest standard of living. Living in an age of increasingly regressive tax cuts and anti-welfare rhetoric, I thought it was time to look to Norway for a firsthand experience of the welfare state in the world’s most expensive country. So The Rake assigned me to go there and have a baby.

That’s not exactly true. Actually, my wife Katy found out that she was pregnant right about the time I received word that I’d won a Fulbright fellowship. We’d be in Trondheim when our first child was scheduled to arrive.

Naturally, one of our chief worries was getting health care coverage abroad. Katy had been covered by my insurance through the University of Minnesota, but when my teaching assistantship ended, we had to scramble. We called around to Blue Cross and other insurers for rates. Pregnancy is considered a “pre-existing condition,” as if it’s some sort of disease, and no one would have us. Even the health insurance guaranteed through the U.S. Secretary of State’s office for Fulbright grantees excludes pregnancy. Finally, we asked an official at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where I’d be studying, if we’d be covered by the national Norwegian system. Her response: “I don’t see why not.” We asked if she could send us the proper forms. “There’s really no rush,” she said, “You can just fill them out once you arrive.” Thanks to the health care mess in our own nation, which has conditioned us to be skeptical and nervous, we were panicked by this carefree, almost reckless attitude toward health insurance.

Back in Minnesota, without insurance we would have been facing a hospital bill for at least $5,000 for a normal delivery, or as much as $21,000 for a C-section or other complications—and that wouldn’t even include the physician fees. As it turned out, a simple residency permit for a year in Norway meant that the Norwegian government would take care of us, and cover the considerable expenses involved in having a baby. We received a pamphlet from the Royal Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, which confirmed, “Compulsorily insured under the National Insurance Scheme are all persons resident or working in Norway.”

No wonder Norway has had the highest quality of life among all nations for the last couple of years. “It’s not that we buy more things or have more things, it’s that we are guaranteed a high standard of living,” an American living in Oslo told me. “We don’t have two cars, we take the bus, and we can probably count on one hand the number of times we go out to eat.” While this may not be the American dream of wealth, Norway’s system offers its citizens a degree of stability and certainty unheard of in the U.S.: Your health care, higher education, and pension will be provided by the government, and you won’t be out on the street if you lose your job.

Just scraping by on my student stipend, then, is not so scary in a country with such comprehensive social services. While Norway’s prices are sky-high—a small bottle of water can run you more than four dollars and a Burger King Whopper sets you back ten bucks—it can also boast the world’s highest standard of living because of its shared wealth.

“Wilbert! Wilbert!” his wife yelled at the top of her lungs toward the makeshift house behind the llama cage at Behn’s Game Farm in the tiny town of Aniwa, in northern Wisconsin. “He’s hard of hearing,” she explained. With a slight limp, Wilbert slowly emerged from the plywood building, looking as though he’d just awakened from a nap.

At eighty years old and some change, Wilbert Behn is the oldest lion and tiger tamer in the world. His white hair is frazzled, perhaps from his snooze, and his ratty jeans and soiled shirt carry a ripe smell that suggests he knows animals. As he walked by the tiger cage, the fierce Bengali and Siberian cats watched him nervously. Obviously, they know who’s the boss.

How does one become a lion tamer? “One day I just jumped in the ring and tried it out,” Wilbert remembered. “I’ve been doing shows ever since, for the last forty-nine years. You should try it—you never know if you’re a natural until you get in the cage,” he told me. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I did not point out that if I find out I’m not a natural, I’ll be dead.

I asked the missus what they usually feed these big cats, who seemed to be eyeing me hungrily. “Oh, fresh meat. Usually beef or veal. We don’t get as many horses anymore because people sell them for dog food.” Wilbert said that feeding time can be dangerous, though. “Once when I was feeding the lion, I got bit through both of my legs, and I got clobbered. I stepped over the trough and he just figured I was meat. I was real hung up for a while, until someone came to help me. If it wasn’t for rubber boots, I wouldn’t be around anymore.”

Nevertheless, Wilbert retains his cool composure around the cats. “I always look them in the eye. If you don’t, that’s when they get you. I use two objects, since the cats can’t concentrate on two things at a time. You know if I really didn’t want to get hurt by the cats, though, the only thing I could really do would be to stay the heck out of the ring.”

The danger isn’t only to the tamer, however. “I’ve had up to six cats in the ring at the same time, and once I did a show and the lioness went after the tiger. She bit the tiger right through the shoulder blade and blood was everywhere. I finally was able to get them separated by distracting them, so they didn’t kill each other. I looked into the stands and noticed that the audience had run away.”

“See, most cats are declawed to make them less dangerous, but I never declaw or neuter them. If they’re neutered or declawed, I wouldn’t even have them on a plate—they’re still dangerous. A woman just got maimed down in Busch Gardens, Florida. A cat got her and chewed off her arm at the elbow.”

Wilbert seems to love the danger of training lions and tigers, however, and he lifted up his shirt to show me scars from tiger bites across his body. But many tamers aren’t even that lucky. Wilbert told the gruesome story of his friend Dwayne who started another circus in northern Wisconsin. “The first show he did, a cat got a hold of him. The lion dragged him around the ring in front of two hundred schoolkids and their parents. He was dead by then, though.” Wilbert shakes his head sadly. “Now, every time I do a show, I can still see him standing there in the ring with me.”

Wilbert viewed this incident as a reason to continue with his work. He pointed out his plywood auditorium with the large sign above the door that says, “NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR INJURIES.” Ever the showman, Wilbert said, “If you want, I could bring the cats into the ring and give you a show now!”—Eric Dregni

Katy is very proud of her pair of UPS brown socks. She bugged the UPS guy continually to bring her a catalog of all the UPS clothes she could order. Even after weeks of pestering, he never came through with this alleged catalog. One day, however, he handed her a brand new pair of heavyweight socks with the gold UPS logo embroidered on the cuff. When she asked how much she owed him, he replied hastily, “Forget about it,” and sped away in his square truck. Perhaps they were “hush socks” to stop her from asking about how she could get a UPS uniform.

Who wouldn’t want one of those pairs of UPS shorts to impress their friends? More certain than the first appearance of milfoil in Lake Harriet, all the UPS, USPS, and Fed Ex carriers show up one day in short-sleeved shirts, short pants, and those color-coordinated socks. Do they all decide at the same time when summer has begun?

I queried Mark, the UPS man who comes to my office, about these mysterious-yet-casual uniforms. He appeared relaxed—perhaps a little too relaxed—when he responded. “We can pull out our shorts anytime. There’s even a UPS guy in the skyways who wears them all year round.” Do they have a dress code? “Oh yeah, we always have to wear our uniform every day. UPS gives us our five uniforms, one for each day of the week.” Doesn’t that make for a lot of laundry? “They wash our uniforms and even mend them when they have holes. We only have to buy our socks and shoes.” Aha! Finally we’re getting somewhere.

Before I could ask Bob if he got tired of wearing brown and if they let him bring his uniforms home, he dashed out the door. (They always seem to be in such a rush.)

I soon learned the reason for the secretiveness surrounding the man in brown. A rumor spread across the Internet a few months ago that UPS trucks had been stolen and a large quantity ($32,000 worth, supposedly) of UPS uniforms had been purchased on the Internet auction site eBay by Al Qaeda terrorists hoping to use them as disguises to enter office buildings.

My regular mailman, Denny, had more time to chat, so I asked him if United States Postal Service regulations were as strict. “They give us an allotment every year of about $300 and have all sorts of catalogs of clothes you can buy,” he replied. “I usually order my uniforms off the Internet, though, just because it’s so cheap. When postal carriers retire, they usually just donate their old clothes. That’s where I picked up these shorts. They have holes in the pockets, but I don’t care.” Apparently his dress code isn’t super-rigid, since Denny also prefers to spice up his wardrobe with a Harley-Davidson headband.

In any case, the urban myth of terrorists posing as UPS carriers was debunked. UPS spokesperson Kristen Petrella said, “Totally untrue, 110 percent false, no substance. UPS does not condone the sale of its uniforms and we do investigate any reports of unauthorized use.” With the one exception of UPS socks. Perhaps socks were deemed not enough of a uniform to fool anybody.—Eric Dregni

“Do you think you can make an all-star wrestler out of me?” I asked Sheriff and Shifty at Midwest Pro Wrestling in Maple Grove. They looked me over—I’m 5’ 9” and weigh only 155 pounds—and assured me, “Sure, just give us enough time. Size doesn’t matter anymore.” In fact, Terry Klinger (stage name “Sheriff”) is slightly shorter than I am, so I signed up for a trial session.

“The first six months is wrestling training, then the second six months we work on costumes, talking in front of the camera, and riling up the crowd,” Sheriff told me. How did he get his snazzy name? “I can still remember the day! I was channel-surfing and heard the theme song for Cops. I went down to the cop shop on Hennepin for a uniform and even got a badge with my name on it. The fans love it!”

Shifty, aka Dan Schaffner, chimed in. “There are basically two kinds of characters. ‘Heels’ are the bad guys, and ‘faces’—or ‘baby faces’—are the good guys. If you can’t make people hate you, then you’re a face. You can be a heel for six months, then the fans love you and you become a face. It used to be that the heel would come out and insult the crowd. Nowadays, everyone likes the heels because people like the bad guys better.”

I asked if I could still wrestle if I don’t have an alter ego yet. “You probably don’t want people to know your real name, because then you’re in the phone book and then they show up at your work. That’s no good,” Sheriff told me.

I couldn’t wait to get started. Shifty and Sheriff told me I could begin wrestling in front of crowds at their Sunday evening performances in Maple Grove after six months of training. “We get up to 225 people in here for the shows at three dollars each,” Sheriff said. The matches are then aired on channel 20 in the northwest suburbs and on channel 6 everywhere else, starting in May.

First, I needed to meet my adversaries: The Punisher, Kid Krazy, Joey E. (a cruiserweight champion), The Anarchist (“Right now, he’s a heel, but he used to be a face”) and Joessiah (as in Joe-Messiah, who has his own religion with his Joesciples and dreams of Joetopia). Absent tonight were Chaos, Pretty Boy Delgado, and Ice Cream Man (“He comes out in his white pants and hands out ice cream bars to the fans”). I wanted to shoot some photos of these young wrestlers, but Sheriff stopped me. “I don’t want people to see them without their costumes because the fans will start talking on Internet chatrooms about how they’ve seen that these guys are actually friends.”

Before we started training, I asked Shifty if the rumors are true that professional wrestling is fake. He obviously didn’t like the question and surprised me by breaking into a semantic discussion. “Define the word fake,” he challenged. “Fake meaning it doesn’t hurt, then you’re wrong. Fake meaning it’s a show, then you’re right.”

I got suited up in a dressing room that was wallpapered with WWE posters, swimsuit centerfolds, and 93X banners. Hoping to intimidate my rivals, I donned my “Big Ole” T-shirt, which depicts a viking. Sheriff then introduced me to the wrestlers. “This is Eric. He’s a journalist for The Rake and doesn’t think this is real, or that we get hurt. Who wants to get in the ring with him first?” These motley characters snickered as though they could smell fresh blood. Sheriff stopped them. “Before we do anything, you have to learn how to ‘take a bump.’” In other words, how to fall.

“The floor has a car spring in the middle covered by two-by-sixes and a horse-hair mat,” Sheriff said, as he demonstrated correct landing procedure. I mimicked his moves. My legs flew into the air, and I hit the canvas with a painful thud. The mat wasn’t nearly as soft as I expected; my first ‘bump’ almost knocked the wind out of me. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Breathe out before you fall. And tuck your head.”

The next move was “running the ropes,” or taking no more than two steps across the eighteen-foot ring and springing off the garden-hose-covered cables. The goal was to build maximum speed, and thereby reap devastation on my giant opponents. Luckily, they refrained from giving me the “Leaping Neckbreaker Clothesline” as I ran back and forth.

Since neither “taking a bump” nor “running the ropes” seemed to be my strength, the Sheriff suggested I take a “Flying Leg Drop” across my neck. “Lay down in the middle of the mat. And whatever you do, don’t move a muscle or you’ll get hurt.” Joessiah flew off the rope and landed with his enormous right leg across my Adam’s apple. I thought this was surely the end, as the deafening thunk of his body crashed over me. Unbelievably, I was fine. Joessiah miraculously broke his fall with his other leg, which crashed harmlessly near my head.

Unscathed, my confidence was building. Maybe I truly could become a professional wrestler. Joessiah took that as his cue to fly off the ropes and nail me with a punishing “Running Elbow Drop.” Once again I forgot to breathe. As I staggered to my feet, gasping for air, he was eager to demonstrate the “Full Body Slam.” I politely declined.

Tag off! It was The Anarchist’s turn. “Don’t resist! Just relax or you’ll get hurt,” the Sheriff warned me, as The Anarchist dropped me on my stomach and tied me into a submissive pretzel. While my limbs were a limp knot behind my back, he asked if I wanted to see his “finishing move.” At least the questions were getting easier. No, I said.

Instead, The Anarchist showed off his “signature” on another new student named Joe. “Total Anarchy” consisted of leaping from the ropes onto Joe, spinning him like a sack of potatoes, and then flinging him on the mat as if he were a booger.

While The Anarchist was reveling in victory with his back turned to me, I looked around for a folding chair to get in at least one cheap shot. The Sheriff read my mind, though, and said the chairs only come out for the performances.—Eric Dregni

To avoid the static of a wool ski cap, I bought a black, small-brimmed fedora. My friends greeted me with “Hey mafioso!” An Italian friend of mine had the opposite reaction. “Hey Tex! Ciao Cowboy!” he said. Obviously, we have become a hat-illiterate society.

John F. Kennedy wore a silk top hat to his presidential inauguration. But when he rose to give his inaugural address, he left his overcoat and hat on his chair. Americans were shocked at their hatless president. Many spectators were surprised simply because it was so damn cold—22 degrees. Army units supposedly used flame-throwers to get rid of more than nine inches of snow around the Capitol building earlier that morning.

While Jackie still wore her Sunday bonnets through most of her husband’s presidency, JFK’s hair flowed in the wind, giving him that daring look Charles Lindbergh had perfected decades before. The king of Camelot had removed his crown.

Kennedy’s fashion statement was also a salvo against class segregation. Up to his time, brimmed hats—from fedoras to bowlers—distinguished a white-collar man, someone who sat at a desk and left his lid on the rack. Blue-collar workers wore caps, and lower-class women wrapped their locks in a kerchief. Going hatless wasn’t an option. What you wore on your head was an advertisement of your social status, at least until this class cue was forever nixed by JFK.

As sales plummeted, many hat stores closed their doors for good. In the Twin Cities, few hatters remain, except for several small boutiques with unbearably cute names like “Whatahat” and “Hats Meow.” Meanwhile, back in the mainstream, hats have been relegated to sports and war—baseball caps and helmets. Neither hipsters nor Alberta clippers seem to be able to affect a real resurgence in hat-wearing. You’d be surprised how many “sensible” Minnesotans avoid wearing a hat even in the dead of winter. “Hat head” is an especially uncool affliction.

The search for the perfect hat brought Europeans to Minnesota. At about the time Westerners first explored the Midwest, there was nothing more chic in the salons of Paris and the pubs of London than the beaver-skin hat. One of the Voyageurs’ most important errands was transporting beaver pelts to hat-makers back East.

The other day, I dropped off a Borsalino beaver-skin fedora at Hamline Cleaners. The Snelling Avenue shop is the last in town to clean and block hats. Joe, the hatter, was thrilled. He exclaimed, “This is the second Borsalino I’ve had in two weeks! I usually only get a handful all year round. The best hat made is the Borsalino.”

I asked Joe, Who still wears hats? “Older guys, mostly. And the black clientele wears a lot of Homburgs and derbies. They take pride in what they wear. Not to say that white guys don’t, but they usually have them blocked for sentimental reasons—maybe the hat belonged to their grandpa.”

Oddly, Joe doesn’t wear a hat. “I’ve just got big ears, that’s why I don’t wear one,” he said.

Hank Lederer is an “anticipatory thinker” who plots trends. From this plotting, he hopes to predict all the great (and not-so-great) things that might await us in the future, from cryogenics to extraterrestrial colonies. He is a futurist, and he is my tax accountant.

Each spring when my kitchen table overflows with W-2s and 1040s and Schedule Cs, our discussions inevitably veer from Roth IRAs to not-yet-invented scientific gizmos. “In the future,” he told me recently, “virus-sized computers will be able to go inside you and change your genes. Nanotechnology-computerized systems will run through your body and check for bad DNA. You’ll need a computer to doctor up your genes so you won’t get old. People will be able to live as long as they want, or at least until they get bored, or they have an accident. I don’t think people will want to live more than two hundred years, though. They’ll probably just get bored and kill themselves, but that’s my opinion.” A morbid thought, to be sure, but part of me wonders whether Hank has computed the additional taxes that will be assessed over a doubly long lifetime.

Occasionally, I join my accountant at a meeting of the Minnesota Futurists. Saturday mornings in St. Paul, the group gathers at the home of Earl Joseph, who worked for 20 years as a professional futurist for Unisys. In the front hall of his Summit Avenue mansion—a beautiful building that is situated squarely in the past—Joseph has placed a crystal ball. But he’s quick to let me in on the joke: They don’t predict the future, like psychics. They study “Anticipatory Sciences,” which extrapolate past and present trends into the future. In other words, if you can imagine something, it can come true. I was confused. What’s the difference between anticipating and predicting the future? Hank explained, “There are so many variables that you don’t know what the hell is going to happen. That’s when a leader or a group comes in and says what they want to see happen.” Presumably, futurists then will be in a good position to make helpful suggestions.

The group of 19 futurists gathered around a huge dining room table. Sweet rolls and coffee were passed around. Announcements of new discoveries—everything from kitchen gadgets to genetic engineering—were heralded. If any of the group had successfully predicted these advances in a previous meeting, they did not gloat or claim credit at present. According to the Minnesota Futurists, robots are now more proficient speakers and can translate numerous languages. Several more gaseous and Earthlike planets have been discovered. A 3,000-foot-tall solar and wind-power tower will be erected in Australia for $380 million, and it will produce 200 megawatts of power. Meanwhile, petroleum companies that can’t dig in Alaska have moved to Siberia, where there are hardly any environmental regulations. This last development was not received well. One futurist chimed in, “What’s the energy solution? Big towers! Washington would be a perfect place for windmills because of all the hot air.”

The main topic of our recent meeting was intelligent agents (“IA”), which are essentially computer programs that can learn. “The ultimate intelligent agent will bring me here to Earl’s house and I’ll just sit back and read the paper while it drives,” Hank informed me. “I want it to have emotions, or rather to understand emotions. Then to shut up if I’m in a bad mood. It’s software that can learn and be your friend.”

“Whether you’re using a vacuum cleaner or a refrigerator, you’re going to need intelligent agents,” Earl said. Hank concurred. “They’ll be embedded in the walls, windows, everything. They will counteract vibrations to keep your house silent. They will replace the roads with smart roads, which will have microscopic computers in them that will automatically repair themselves. This is far-out stuff.”

The discussion digressed into all the possible applications and misuses of IA. “There’s lots of Doomsday scenarios when you get these computers going,” Hank said. “I love high tech; it’s people that are no good!” I could see the statement appealed to him, as both an accountant and a futurist.

“You can smell the underwear,” said textile curator Linda McShannock as she opened the door to the nation’s largest museum collection of panties, girdles, brassieres, and other unmentionables. We were two stories underground, deep in the heart of the Minnesota Historical Society, where the real rubber waistbands are slowly disintegrating. More than 3,500 historically significant undergarments are carefully stored in this high-security vault. The temperature is a constant 65 degrees, and sodium vapor light insures that no ultraviolet rays will damage these priceless pieces. Bust pads, boxers, petticoats, corset covers, and of course, hoops and tournures for that 19th-century wide-load look—they are all stored in these lockers, which are funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities. Of the Historical Society’s 40,000 square feet of storage, a substantial portion is taken up by underpants. The collection is not currently open to the public, but next summer it will replace the “Up North” display for the letter U in the permanent “Minnesota A to Z” exhibit.

“Munsingwear was as visible in Minneapolis as milling,” said McShannock, by way of explanation. If not for the booming flour business, our city might have been known as the underwear capital of the world. When Munsingwear downsized and moved out of state in 1979, the motherlode of museum collections was bestowed upon the MHS.

“It’s my favorite subject,” confessed McShannock. After getting a degree from the University of Minnesota in fashion merchandising, she volunteered at the MHS and spent months cataloging 900 bras and girdles—a mere fraction of the Munsingwear collection. She dated them, photographed them, wrote descriptions, and put it all in a searchable database. Her meticulous work is now used by underwear researchers across the country.

McShannock opened one drawer to show a masochistic corset stiffened with whale bone, and she pointed out how women were literally constrained by underwear. Put under too much pressure, these bones could splinter with painful results, at least until steel-reinforced corsets were developed. Enter underwear revolutionary Amelia Jenks Bloomer who pushed for female freedom in the 1850s. (Her famous “bloomers” are not to be confused with knock-offs like knickers—short for “knickerbockers,” or copycat “scimp scamp” underpants.) The mutiny against the petticoat and other vagaries seemed unstoppable in the 1870s.

Some of these innovations left skeptics sour. Gustav Jaeger ranted that “only animal fibres prevented the retention of the ‘noxious exhalations’ of the body, retained the salutary emanations of the body which induce a sense of vigour and sound health and ensured warmth and ventilation.” In other words, Jaeger was arguing for wool. George D. Munsing, on the other hand, saw an opening. By plating silk over wool, the silkiness of the garment touched the skin, while the garment retained its woolen warmth. Munsing’s famous “itchless underwear” was all the rage and helped keep to a minimum the embarrassing scratching incidents.

Minneapolis was a special challenge, of course, since warm underwear meant the difference between life and death in the frigid winter. Munsing saw real opportunity for a volume business, and he marketed his famous scarlet union suit in the 1890s. By 1917, Munsingwear produced 30,000 undergarments a day, and one-tenth of the nation’s union suits. The company did more than just free women from the confines of corsets. During the 1920s, it was the largest employer of women in Minneapolis and the largest underwear producer in the country. To celebrate their success and show their patriotic fervor after V-Day, Munsingwear even produced a prototype American flag bra and girdle in 1946—a racy treasure that is jealously guarded by McShannock.

With the grand opening of Hormel’s $8 million Spam Museum, there’s not much mystery left in the story of the world’s strangest can of food. The Rake dives in—only to learn the “Spam Gelatin Jump” has been canceled.

Now it’s just a savory memory. Marion Ross, Barb Billingsley, Tom Brokaw, and other dubious TV superstars were there. Southern Minnesotans bit into free Spamburgers. Teenie boppers bounced to the sounds of former Gear Daddy Martin Zellar, Austin’s hippest native son. Kids scrambled around a pork-themed amusement park. Tourists hauled around bags loaded down with cans of Spam extracted from a stack that spelled “SPAM” in six-foot high letters. “A lot of people come to stock up on it for the whole year, since it only costs a buck a can,” said a salesman who had already bagged his own year’s supply. Meanwhile, the line grew longer to buy Spam boxer shorts, Spam key chains, Spam license plate holders, and anything else that could conceivably be emblazoned with this four-letter word.

This was Spam Jam 2002 in Austin, Minnesota, and an occasion to celebrate the long-awaited inauguration of the $8 million Spam Museum and a new era of nostalgia. Even this all-American Spam (short for “spiced ham,” you know) suffered from the attacks of the pork-abstaining terrorists; the museum’s opening was postponed from mid-September 2001 until this summer.

The museum represents Hormel’s struggle to keep Spam a relevant pop cultural icon—like Coca-Cola, say, or Hershey bars—as opposed to shelved as a kitchsy reminder of a bygone era, outdated and mediocre American cuisine synonymous with unwanted email.

To clean up Spam’s image for the annual festival, some long-standing games have been nixed. There was a time when Spam Jam featured such events as the ever-unpopular Spam Gelatin Jump. “It’s basically all the white stuff around Spam in a big vat. You stick your arms in and pull out a golf ball for a prize,” said an attendant a few years ago when I last visited.

Even the beautiful blue and yellow Spambelle has been warehoused. The mini paddleboat, dating from 1956, used to give little rides to big eaters on Austin’s East Side Lake. But then the little steamboat sunk in 1999—on live TV. “They had to pull it out with a crane,” one eyewitness explained to me. “I guess the captain ate too much Spam!”

First the rumbles raged in England between the Rockers and the Mods. Slick leather-clad Elvis wannabes dropped a few shillings in the jukebox, hopped on their BSA Goldstars, ran some scooters off the road, and popped back for a pint before the rockabilly faded. Rockers mocked the Mods’ more stylish—but less powerful—scooters calling them “Italian hairdryers.” The Mods sought their revenge on the beaches of Brighton—as immortalized in The Who’s Quadrophenia—and casually brushed the blood off their sharkskin suits.

Inevitably, the Mods couldn’t stay united. A schism developed, dividing them into two sects: the aficionados of the slightly less expensive, but more famous Vespa versus fans of the longer, more stable and stylish Lambretta. Some decked out their scooters with every mirror and light imaginable, while others souped up the engines and stripped off every unnecessary body part. By 1972 the Vespa won the popularity contest, and Lambretta’s factory in Milan was quietly decommissioned.

Now, the balkanization continues. Loyal Vespisti have drawn the battle lines once again, this time between the old and the new. The Vespa first came to this country in the 1950s. It arrived in force, too, via Sears department stores, where they were sold alongside the lawn mowers and washing machines. When Sears gave up the enterprise, a little scooter shop on University Avenue called Vesparado kept the spirit alive locally until about 1984, when the Vespa couldn’t meet tougher U.S. emission standards. The remaining scooters were nursed along by devoted mechanics and hobbyists working to keep these Italian marvels alive.

Vespas are now back in the U.S. with a sleek new design. The basic shape remains the same. (As original Vespa designer Corradino d’Ascanio said back in the 1950s, “The Vespa will always look like it does. Even when it is atomic-powered and riding on the moon.”) Already a phenomenon, the new Vespa has appeared in numerous TV ads, and was even featured on Good Morning America—although Diane Sawyer didn’t do much for scooterists’ inferiority complex when she hopped on a Vespa exclaiming, “We’re not Hell’s Angels, we’re Hell’s Dorks!” Even so, big stars such as Jay Leno, Sandra Bullock, and Robert DeNiro all have popped for a new Vespa.

The new scooters are sleek, modern versions of the classic without all the vibrations and front-brake dipping which made the original Vespa infamous. They tote an ultra-modern price tag, too—$2980 for a 50cc version and $3980 for the 150cc which is capable of pushing the needle past 60 mph.

“If you don’t care about quality or image, buy a plastic Yahama scooter. If you want to buy into the Vespa lifestyle, we’re the place,” said Jim D’Aquila, the co-owner of the new Vespa Boutique in downtown Minneapolis.

What’s that? Who said “boutique?” The unfortunate moniker does little to dispel the “Italian hairdryer” myth, but it does fit the new digs. Where else can you find Vespa watches, Vespa silver cufflinks, Vespa perfume, Vespa bath foams, Vespa herbal cream, Vespa bath oil, Vespa bath salts (in strawberry, mint, musk, and rose scents)?

Enrico Piaggio, the original head of the company that builds Vespas, told Time magazine in 1952, “The best way to fight Communism in this country is to give each worker a scooter, so he will have his own transportation, have something valuable of his own, and has a stake in the principle of private property.” Piaggio—clever capitalist! — wasn’t kidding. To open a new Vespa store, entrepreneurs reportedly need to plunk down a hefty chunk of change: $350,000.

Hardcore scooter enthusiasts, on the other hand, are still willing to get a little grease under their fingernails. Jeremy Liebig persists in repairing and refurbishing vintage Vespas at his Scooter Lab garage, and refused an offer to work for the new store. Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly’s scooter columnist Jeremy Wilker impugned the new Vespa campaign when he referred to it as “the Gap approach.” Fifty-one of these boutiques are to be opened around the country. Meanwhile, Minneapolis will get a second scooter shop in June. “Scooterville” will occupy an old warehouse near Dinkytown and it will specialize in Indian-made Vespas, called “Bajaj.” These scooters sport the older, classic style for the relatively retro price of $2000.

It may well be the summer of scooters in the Twin Cities. The Vespa Boutique owners are confident the new scooters will be a hit, but when I asked co-owner Garry Kieves for some details about the new Vespas, he demurred. “I can answer any questions you have on Ducatis and other Italian motorcycles,” he offered. How’s that? Have the Rockers won after all?