Pickled Butt Nuggets

By Chad Gathany

This comedic memoir is a reflection on some of Chad Gathany's not so easy-going moments from an unhinged season of life. In "pickled butt nuggets," he reveals how he learned to make a beautiful rooster out of a butt nugget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350954944

Chad Gathany

Chad Gathany is a blue-collar construction worker and adventurer who has traveled extensively across the globe. Chad is an easygoing, non-dramatic, sometimes wild and crazy guy. Chad had an unhinged time in his life and decided one night to put the memories in a book.

Book preview

Prologue

Pickled Butt Nuggets is a short story about a small window of time in my life. I was only married for a year, but its impact crushed my belief in soul mates and happily ever after. I’ve always been a pretty happy and easy-going person who stayed away from bullshit and drama as much as possible, but after this fiasco, I was angry for a very long time. Not on the outside; I still maintained my kindness towards others. But down deep, I was holding a grudge for a long time and I didn’t want to let it go.

I was angry at myself for getting into my situation and angry at her for putting me in a situation with fighting and drama. When I would tell people stories about what happened, most would say, No way, or That didn’t happen. It took years to finally let my anger go, and when I did, God gave me peace in my heart. I had no more anger towards her, and what I had thought was some crazy drama at the time, turned into comedy for me.

I didn’t write this for fame or fortune; I’m definitely not a writer! Hell, I can barely write my name without screwing it up. I wrote this for me, to get it off my chest, and have fun doing it.

From this point forward, I will do my best to tell my story and hopefully give someone a laugh. The stories are true from my perspective and to the best of my recollection. The thoughts I was having in my head are the way I was feeling at the time they were happening. Due to the years that have gone by, some may not be in the exact order that they happened in, but they all happened!

Names have not been changed to expose the guilty!!

Prologue #2

My lawyer and editor insisted I change the names so I wouldn’t be sued. They even recommended changing it from non-fiction to fiction. Now, how the hell am I going to tell a true non-fiction comedy if I can’t say names and have to make it fiction??

Ok, fine . . . the names have been changed to protect the guilty! As for fiction or non-fiction, I’ll let you decide, but I will start it off as fiction.

Once upon a time, in a far, far away land . . .

Me

Who am I? No one special; just an average American guy. I graduated high school, went into the military, started working construction after that, and have just been a middle-class, blue-collar American since. I grew up in the Midwest in a middle-class family; Dad worked construction, Mom was a teacher, and my younger sis was a pain in the ass, in a little sister kind of way. We lived on the edge of the country and small-town suburbia. If you stood on our roof and looked south, it was corn fields as far as you could see, and to the north were small subdivisions scattered around till you got to town. I did all the normal kid things, played baseball, basketball, and football; we were outside more than inside. We even had our own big-wheel gang that ran around the streets when we were little kids. It wasn’t until I was a little older that my love for dirt bikes would be discovered.

Heading down the street with my friends to play baseball at the park, one of the older kids in the neighborhood came ripping down the street riding a wheelie on his dirt bike, then he jumped over the ditch into the park area. We all went running down there to watch him ride around. Somehow, he convinced us younger kids to lay down in a row on the back side of a dirt hill, then proceeded to jump over all of us.

Whoa!! . . . watching him fly through the air over all of us; I was hooked! I thought, One day, I’m going to have a dirt bike like that! But for now, all I have is my cheap bicycle.

Behind the park where we all played ball, was a tree line, then open fields with hills everywhere. The older kids made BMX tracks all through the fields and hills and us younger kids would go hang out and watch them ride and race each other. One day while hanging out watching the cool older kids race around on their BMX bikes, one of them asked if they could take my bike around the track and hit some jumps.

Wanting to be cool and fit in with older kids, I said, Sure.

Me and my buddies watched with excitement as he rode my bike around the track hitting the jumps. When he came up to the biggest jump on the track, he jumped off of it and ghosts rode my bike. We all watched as my bike flew through the air, then crashed and flipped 100 times through the dirt. We all cheered, thinking that was the coolest thing ever! Later that day riding my bike home, peddling as fast as I could down the street, I was playing out scenarios in my head of me riding on the track, hitting all the jumps. I was about 100 yards from my driveway and as I put the force of my leg muscle on the pedal, my cheap Kmart bike broke in half! Literally in half! As it crumbled to the ground, I ate shit, face-first into the ditch on the side of the road. Dazed and confused with a bloody elbow and scratches on my forehead, I looked up at my bike in two pieces!

Oh, crap!! Dad’s going to kill me! I picked up the two halves of my bike and did the walk of shame, dragging my bike the rest of the way home and hoping none of the neighbors saw me. I was half-excited that I might be able to get a real BMX bike, but the other half was afraid I would get my ass beat for ruining my bike.

That night at dinner . . .

Ummmm Dad . . . I was riding my bike home from the park, and it just broke in half.

What? How did it just break in half? Were you out jumping it with the older kids? he asked.

Ummmm . . . No, I was just riding it down the road. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! I thought.

Luckily, my birthday was coming up soon and I asked for a new BMX bike. A real one this time; one that could take the abuse of riding offroad. Till then, I had no wheels. Time to play war in the woods with my friends, shooting BB guns at each other.

Don’t shoot your eye out! Mom would always say. But what’s more fun than running around the woods playing war with your boys?

When my birthday finally came around, I ran out to the garage and my dad was putting together a ten-speed road bike. What? What is this?? I thought.

Dad, I need a BMX bike, not a road bike!

Son, we’re thinking ahead, soon you’ll be older, and you’ll want to ride on the roads.

The devastation ran through my head! No! I don’t want to ride on the roads; I want to be in the dirt forever!

The road bike sat in the garage most of the time. I had a new plan; I would take the money I made in the summer from mowing the neighbors’ grass and I would start buying bike parts from my friends or anyone that had extra parts and build my own BMX bike. My plan was working; I loved getting my hands dirty and working on things. I finally had all the parts to complete my bike. I sanded and prepped all the parts, spray painted them, and put it all together. I was sitting on it, making sure the handlebars were at the perfect angle, and the brake levers were in the right spot, one more scan of the bike, tighten the bolts, adjust the chain tension so it wouldn’t come off . . . I was so excited to show off my bike at the park where everyone was riding. I jumped on and headed down the driveway, turned onto the street, and peddled as fast as I could to get there.

Ha! . . . there’s a big bump in the pavement, I’m going to hit that and fly through the air! That will be my first jump on my new bike! My adrenaline was pumping when I hit it, it was like slow motion as my bike hit the bump in the road and lifted off the ground; I felt freedom and excitement. I’m one of the cool kids now!

As the slow motion continued . . .