It’s Not Much of a Town but It Has Spirit

Tradition is an indelible part of life in this tiny hamlet, a speck on the California map high up on the slopes of Kern County’s 4,356-foot Blue Mountain.

This Saturday, there will be a potluck dinner and gift exchange at the annual Woody Christmas Party. The festivities have been held in the town church each year since 1909, when the stately white frame sanctuary was moved by horse and wagon 10 miles down the mountain from the town of Glenville.

The one-room school in Woody dates from 1873, and this year, as always, there will be a Christmas play. All 13 students will star in “Christmas in Oz Land” on Dec. 16.

Last week, as they do every year about this time, the Woody brothers, Ward, 76, and Bob, 71, drove their herd of several hundred Angus and Hereford cattle five miles from the high range on their Blue Mountain Ranch to the low range just west of town.

The town is named after the Woodys’ grandfather, Dr. Sparrell W. Woody, who gave up his medical practice and moved here with his wife, Sarah, in 1862 to become a rancher. He, too, drove his cattle down the mountain each December.

Dr. Woody was born in Virginia in 1826. He picked up his medical degree in St. Louis, then headed west in 1849 to the California gold camps. He and his wife were the first couple married in present-day Bakersfield. The great Kern River flood of 1862 drove them out of Bakersfield to Blue Mountain.

Woody has never been much of a town. By the early 1870s, there were about 100 people living here, the same as today. Same names, too, mostly. Nearly everyone in Woody traces his or her ancestry to the first half-dozen families that settled here--the Woodys, Maltbys, Rutledges, Weringers, Moores and Bohnas. Almost everybody here is related.

The annual Woody reunion is held on the third Sunday in May. That’s another tradition. Anyone who has ever lived in Woody, including all those who have been teachers at the school, try to make it. Ward and Bob Woodys’ mother, Frances Woody, was a one-room school teacher for 33 years.

There are 13 students currently enrolled at Blake School in Woody, two in kindergarten, twins Ryan and Sara Pascoe in first grade, two second graders, one third grader, no fourth or fifth graders, three in sixth grade, no one in seventh and three in eighth grade.

Blake School got its name from a miner, Frank Blake, who donated his cabin “so the kids on the mountain could get an education.” Robin Lindsey, 27, is the teacher, Tomi Sexton, 27, the teacher’s aide. Lindsey’s great-grandparents and grandparents graduated from the same school, as did Ward and Bob Woody, their children and grandchildren.

Woody once had a nine-room hotel, a store and a gas station. Now there is only a bar and cafe--Buzzards Roost--the new post office and the fire station. Walls of the Buzzards Roost are covered with brands representing local ranches and 124 dollar bills signed by the people of Woody and some out-of-town visitors.

An old jukebox has a selection of country and Western songs, and on Friday nights Buzzards Roost is jammed to the rafters with cowboys and cowgirls from all over the countryside.

The oldest person in town is Alda Weringer, 91, who is Ward and Bob Woody’s aunt. She and her late husband Joe ran the Woody post office from 1914 to 1972.

“Woody has always been a very nice place to live,” she said the other day. “It’s quiet and peaceful. . . . Everybody helps everybody. When it’s branding time, all the men go from ranch to ranch to help. When somebody’s sick or has a problem, we all pitch in. Woody’s that kind of a place.”