My Cow S**t Cousin

I have mentioned George Ward previously. (His mother’s brother was married to my grandmother’s sister.) George was a graduate of Lowell High School in San Francisco. He spent some time as a roustabout in the oilfields near Bakersfield before becoming a dentist in San Francisco.

George had a country home in Camp Meeker where his parents lived and George spent his weekends. George had his place fenced with eleven-foot high fences to keep the deer out of his rose garden. He had started with an eight-foot fence but that did not do the job.

The handle “Cow S**t Cousin” came about in an interesting way. As noted above George had a rose garden. He was very fond of his roses. So when he expressed an interest in getting some chicken manure to fertilize his roses, I rose to the occasion. At the time I was driving a large Dodge pickup. The family was friendly with neighbors by our old chicken ranch. These neighbors had not had chickens for some time and had plenty of well-rotted chicken manure in some of their old chicken houses. Over the period of several years I hauled a number of pickup loads of chicken manure to George’s roses. Thus “Cow S**t Cousin” because “Chicken S**t Cousin” just didn’t sound right.

It is interesting to note that although George professed to be an atheist (His comment about the chicken manure: “…more precious than the blood of Christ”.) his best friend was a Catholic priest to whom he left his estate.

George was a great story teller. He had a particular fondness for bawdy limericks. Remind me sometime and I can repeat some of them for you.