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worked on wildcatting crews for the Gypsy Oil Company throughout Oklahoma Indian
Territory. By the time she started the eighth grade she’d attended thirteen schools, and
learned how to feel at home wherever her travels might take her. In 1937, those travels
had taken her family to California.
A brief encounter changed
Geraldine’s life when she was
pitching pennies at a Bakersfield
carnival that summer.
“I looked up
and saw the most handsome man I
had ever seen,”
she told ‘The Clovis
Independent.’
“It was night and he
was across the other side playing the
same game with his friends.”
Aweek
later, Gerry and her cousin went to
welcome some new neighbors who
had moved in down the block.
“To
my surprise,”
she recalled,
“one of
the young men was the one I had seen
at the carnival.”
He invited her to a
dance in September of 1937. Alvis
and Geraldine married in December.
He was 19 and she was 15.
Alvis Coker at home in
Conway, Arkansas
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