Memories of growing up in a small town and life experiences in general have grown into a book for John Pridgen of Kernersville.

The book, “Beyond the Front Porch,” which was published Feb. 28, is Pridgen’s first, and is available for purchase on Amazon and directly through the publisher Outskirts Press.

While he said he has an idea for a second book, he doesn’t know yet if there will be another to follow. 

It’s “out there in the ether somewhere,” he said.

Born and raised in Spencer, Pridgen graduated from North Rowan High School and continued his education at Catawba College, where he majored in history. It was here that he met his late wife, Kay Cranford Pridgen.

Having worked for Duke Energy while in college as a night dispatcher, he had a connection with them and upon graduation got a job in the engineering group in Winston-Salem thus bringing about a move.

The couple first lived in Clemmons and when he became branch manager for Kernersville, they moved, and he has lived there ever since.

Pridgen left Duke Energy in 2000 and became a real estate broker in 2006 and is currently the broker in charge for the Winston-Salem office for ReMax Realty Consultants and teaches real estate classes. 

During his school years, Pridgen said there were no aspirations to write, but if there was a spark, he would have to point to his senior English teacher Mrs. Tichenor who had an influence on him. However, he said it wasn’t a case of his finishing her class deciding he wanted to write.

He pointed to two influencing factors that helped him get to this point with a published book to his name.

It was 1998 when Pridgen was working for Duke Energy, and he had a long commute every day. It was during those long drives that he would get ideas in his head and write them down. He showed what he had written to some people who told him it was pretty good.
Pridgen said he “never really wanted to think that I was all of that,” so he went to see John Staples, who at that time was the editor of the Kernersville News. He knew Staples and went to show him some samples of his writing, and was told, “these are good, have you ever thought about doing a column?”

Mentored and given a start by Staples, Pridgen began writing a weekly column for the Kernersville News for approximately one and a half years and got some good feedback from his work.

“So that was sort of the start of it,” he said. Once he started writing the columns and other short pieces, he said, “it just seemed to flow.”

In addition to his columns, he would occasionally write and post on Facebook and likewise received messages that the short stories were good and was often told “you ought to write a book.”

Pridgen said several years went by and because he had so many people ask him to do this, he said OK.

“So I just put together a compilation of columns I’d written and other short stuff I had written and pulled it together into a manuscript and that’s kind of how the book came about,” he said.

All of the stories in the book are nonfiction and revolve around family and life experiences, “things either I experienced growing up or experienced in life or ran into,” he said.

Pridgen said he has been asked where he gets his ideas for his stories and said the only way he can explain it is, “sometimes they walk up in the yard, sometimes they walk up on the front porch and sometimes they kick the door in.” 

With his growing up in Spencer, a good portion of the book, he said, deals with things he experienced at an age when he lived there, but it’s not all about Spencer. It also recounts stories surrounding his life after college when he got his job in Winston-Salem. And, he said, quite a few of the stories revolve around family who influenced him, getting married and raising children.

The stories cover a range of emotions, with some meant to be humorous and some about some pretty serious things.

There’s one story that tells of a time in his childhood going out with his grandmother, who had chickens, to gather the eggs.

And another chapter shares about a high school classmate who died from cancer, thus evoking some strong emotions from some readers. One friend shared with him that this “first chapter ripped her heart out,” he said.

“These memories, these reflections, if you will, would just bubble up in my head, and I’d feel compelled to write about it.”

Amid the 200-plus pages in the book, Pridgen had a hard time deciding on his favorite story, but narrowed it down to three, all “about special people who had a profound effect on my life,” he said, which includes “The Gift,” which was about his favorite aunt Irene, “Remembering Grandma’s Love,” and “A Lesson in Courage from High School Homecoming Queen.”

When asked what he hopes people will learn or take away with them once they have read it, he said, “if I made you laugh or if I made you cry, then I’ve done my job” along with the hope that they will “see a reflection of what they went through, life events and things like that.” 

While many encouraged him to write a book, Pridgen said he still struggled with the idea that anyone would be interested in reading what he wrote.

Therefore, this journey, he said, “has been more about self-awareness and hey, this is good enough.”

He doesn’t anticipate winning a Pulitzer Prize or selling a million copies, but he has come to realize that people have passed along good feedback about his writing, so he believes this takes him to the point where “I would encourage people to read it to find their sensitive self in the stories.”

The hardest element of the book, he said, was probably selecting a title as he wanted to highlight the journey the stories provided about growing up in a small town, as well as “the experiences that make up the crazy quilt of life.”

Reflecting on the big front porch he had in his childhood home during those formative years in Spencer and the one he has now at his Kernersville home where he has spent many evenings, he finally settled on the idea that “life’s events take you beyond that front porch. And the memories and life lets you discover who you are and were meant to be.”