A Cowful

Grandpa Tommy’s dad used to say “A cowful is a substantial quantity.” According to my research, the rumen on a mature cow can hold up to 300 pounds. And by anybody’s standards that is quite a bit.

Say you had a cowful of pocket change. You’d almost need a cow to keep it in. Say you had a cowful of wet laundry. It would take a forklift to get it in the dryer. Say you had a cowful of manure. Well, I guess a lot of us do.

If cowful became an accepted unit of measure it could replace the antiquated English standards like the dram and the rod. And those bland, simple minded metric names that somehow sound communistic; kiloliter, hectometer, decigram. Can you picture in your mind a decigram? Is it the weight of a decimated graham cracker? Or ten grandma’s standin’ on the scale?

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