J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – September '10 #10: “Dead Homiez” by Ice Cube

There was a weird yard sale a couple weeks ago with these people selling tons of old Easyrider magazines and weird railroad nails and awesome bullshit. Really, they had all types of nonsense that was interesting, and like 79 cats running around, and the lady of the couple was the same lady who cryptically tucked my receipt into my 12-pack of Old Milwaukee box a few years back at the IGA when it was still here when I bought Old Milwaukee and tomato juice on a Sunday morning and the total was $6.66. Can’t remember all we got, but I got a stack of biker mags, one single railroad nail (which I had just had a phone conversation about like three days before), some 5-gallon jugs for fermenting t’ej in, and other things. The wife went back the next day to try and talk them into selling us 3 of these woven oak chairs for $20, but she only came back with two. But they also had a kitten – all black – which they named Stella Crow. I had told the kids the day before no damn cats, and told the people, being we are dealing with two dogs now that are harshing our country livin’ buzz.
The kitten took to our house nicely though, and was the chillest cat I had ever met. We kinda realized the solution to our pet problem this weekend was the cat and the female dog we have, and get rid of the male one.
Well, it was getting cold at night, and when I tested the woodstove on Saturday, it was smoking some, so I had to tighten that up, clean out the chimney on Sunday morning and all. The kids had been fighting fevers, so we kept them on the couch all day to rest up for a little trick or treating at least, and we came home, and it was cold as fuck, so I hauled in wood and kindling and got ready to crank up the stove. Last trip out, I shut the chickens in and came running up the steps to the house, feeling something under my foot, and then it wobbled off without making a sound under the porch. Fuck.
Go inside and ask the ol’ lady to find Stella Crow. She ain’t around, which is a bad sign. I thought it might have been a possum, but they would’ve shrieked or something. Went back out, crawling under the porch, and eventually found Stella Crow, fucked up but alive. No wounds, but you could tell something was broke. Put the kids to bed, brought her out and me and the ol’ lady tried to help her out, feeling around to try and figure out what was wrong, using some mullein leaves as a hot compress because that’s supposed to set bones according to the mountains of yore, but damn, the kitten was fucked. She never really cried or anything though. We ain’t the affording a regular vet much less an emergency vet type people though.
Next morning, the ol’ lady and oldest kid, who was devastated, took the kid to the local country vet, luckily where a friend of our’s works, and the verdict was probably a broken neck, cat fucked, euthanasia.
It sucked. I have already been wrestling with some internal changes bullshit the past few days, but to step on a 2.5 pound black cat on Halloween night and ultimately kill it, shit sucks. I’m far too sensitive about animals too, far more than I care about people.
Anyways, the ol’ lady buried the cat outside next to a garden and built a mound of white quartz rocks over the spot using rocks I’d been hauling out of a hiking spot for a while now. I went out and took my single railroad nail, stamped “30”, and poked it into the ground in the middle of the quartz.
None of this has anything to do with “Dead Homiez” other than Stella Crow is dead. It was my fault, and I feel bad about it, but not all melodramatically or anything. Real life has plenty of bullshit in it, so fuck idealist people thinking everything is peaches and cream if you have your philosophies right.
STEAL “Dead Homiez”
NEXT UP: Garage punk epicness!