Heee Haw: In Memoriam
In many ways, drinking a can of Heee Haw was the original Tide Pod challenge.
Yes. There are three “E”s in Heee. Or, at least there used to be.
Because that’s how Heee Haw did things: Bigly, before that was a word used by the man entrusted with our nuclear codes. Boldly, like true pioneers do. Utterly unconcerned with having any rational explanation for that visually dazzling triple vowel.
Simply put: Heee Haw gave exactly as many fucks as it had nutritional value.
I found out yesterday that this light had been snuffed out. This candle in the wind had finally succumbed to the stiff northern breeze of the passsage of time. The carbonation? It was gone. Heee Haw was finally flat.
Heee Haw was laid to rest sometime in June by the decidedly two-E’d Midwestern grocery chain, Hy-Vee, and I was finally able to confirm this by doing some online sleuthing after having my suspicions arisen during several trips through my local store.
I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge a true legend today.
A 46-grams-of-sugar goliath that refused to ever be tasted in a casual way. If you wanted to drink a Heee Haw, you had to drink it aggressively.
You know that kid in intramural sports who plays full court, on-ball defense the entire game and puts his junk up on you at all times because he’s so close that he’s technically breathing in your carbon dioxide the moment it leaves your mouth? That was how you had to drink Heee Haw.
You had to bludgeon your palate into submission.
Once, in an 8th grade wrestling match, I was pinned in 12 seconds flat. The whistle blew, some kid from Lux Middle School shot down and flipped me onto my back and turned me into a one man Cirque du Soleil pose before the ref even had the whistle out of his mouth. That’s what it was like drinking Haw.
While this titan of Total Carbs may no longer be with us, its memory will live on forever in the hearts and minds of the young people who it touched along the way.
It’s gorgeously packaged exterior may no longer grace the aisles of Hy-Vee, but I will always remember it as it once was. Sugar-napalming my tongue with no less than 184% of the daily recommend intake of that ingredient as I chugged down a can in the back of a Spanish class in 2005.
Good night, sweet prince. Good night.
(*Author’s note: Heee Haw is survived by: it’s spouse Yellow Dye #5, it’s children Acesulfame Potassium and Sodium Benzoate, as well as its cousin, Mountain Drive. In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent directly to Chris Hatch)
