You’Re Going to Boarding School

Jody was born in Bakersfi eld, California, in 1949 and was raised on a cotton farm near Shafter. While in grade school, he learned to work in the fi elds alongside Mexican farmworkers, hoeing weeds, irrigating, driving tractors, and picking cotton by hand. During high school, he attended a boarding school named Ozark Academy in Gentry, Arkansas, from 1963 to 1967. While there, he worked twenty hours a week at a cabinet shop, earning enough money to pay his own tuition. At Bakersfi eld Junior College, he earned an AA degree in horticulture (plant science) while working parttime at a cabinet shop. While raising a family of four children at the age of twenty-four, he started his own cabinet shop in Atascadero, California, building custom cabinets all over San Luis Obispo County. At twenty-fi ve, he got his general contractors license, sold the cabinet shop, and began building new homes and contracting fi nish carpentry. In 1980, he moved back to Bakersfi eld to work for ten years as a Building Inspector and Code Enforcement Offi cer in Kern County at Bakersfi eld, Taft, and California City. He trained his three sons in construction and helped send his daughter to San Diego State University. After serving a term on the 2010 Madera County Grand Jury, he is now a single retired grandfather of four, living in Oakhurst, California, near Yosemite National Park