GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Growing up in southeastern Colorado, Edith Morrison remembers the Dust Bowl when dirt settled onto everything — inside and out.

“You'd look and see it coming and rolling, high as you can see — nothing but dirt,” said Morrison who'll turn 93, July 28. “The street lamps burned day and night. It was that dark.”

Drought and poor farming practices that involved digging up the deep-rooted native prairie grasses and planting crops that didn't hold the soil caused the great dust storms of the 1930s.

Morrison grew up in the tiny town of Holly, population at the time of about 1,000.

While she was still in high school she took a job as a telephone operator, working evenings and weekends. After she graduated, Morrison transferred to Lamar.

But Everett Morris had fallen for Morrison and asked her to marry him and move back to Holly, where he ran a bakery. The two married Christmas day, about three-quarters of a century ago.

“I went to work in the bakery, peddling bread and serving stores,” Morrison said. The Dust Bowl was still going on and Morrison remembered having to clean out the showcase window every morning.

“You'd think they'd be tight but that dirt settled into those windows so every morning I'd wash them out with a bunch of wet flour sacks,” Morrison said.

She'd pour oil on the floor in order to sweep up the dirt.

“There was a layer of dirt on everything — no matter how you tried to keep it down,” Morrison said. “It never let up.”

Instead of using the clothes line, she'd hang clothes on rods inside the house — but those got dirty also, she said.

Edith and Everett moved to Rifle where they opened a bakery and cafe, and raised their two sons Edwin and Lyndon.

Everett — nicknamed “Bake” did all the baking and cooking while Morrison waited tables, tended bar and “peddled” breads and pastries to surrounding towns and communities, including Silt, New Castle and Glenwood Springs.

It was during World War II and American service men were stationed at Hotel Colorado in Glenwood where Morrison drove a car to deliver baked goods three times a week. Bread and pastries were also brought to the more remote areas of Meeker and Rio Blanco, via horse and wagon.

“I gave rides to hitch-hiking sailors and I always had doughnuts for them,” Morrison said. “I hauled a lot of service fellows during that time.”

Saturday night dances in Rifle attracted the servicemen and others from surrounding communities.

Morris Bakery and Cafe served pies, cakes — “the whole bit, breads, sweet rolls, doughnuts, you name it,” Morrison said.

For several years on News Year's Eve, Everett and Edith were known for their “pig parties” where they'd roast a pig and invite Rifle residents to come feast on barbecued meat, and bakery items piled on a big, long table.

“The whole town came in and out. There'd be a steady stream of people,” Morrison said.

Everett served on the local hospital board of directors, owned a real estate business, and belonged to the Lions and the Elks clubs.

“He was quite the civic pillar,” said his daughter-in-law Susan Morris.

“He was always thinking of something to do — whether it was good or bad. He was quite a character,” Morrison said.

Shortly after their sons were born, Edith and Everett closed the bakery and sold their equipment to Homestyle Bakery in Grand Junction. For the next 15 years or so, Morrison cared for her husband who had contracted emphysema. He died Mother's Day, 1972.

For years the couple had been best friends in Rifle with another couple — Joe and Mary Jane Morrison. Joe Morrison's wife had died a few years earlier. It was more than a year after Everett had died when Joe asked Edith if she'd marry him.

Morrison said she talked to her parents about it and her father said “go for it.” So Edith's name changed from Morris to Morrison. She was married to “Bake” for 37 years, and to Joe for 30 years.

Edith Morrison grew a spectacular flower garden at their Redlands home until Joe died in April, 2002. She sold their house the following fall, and moved into Nellie Bechtel Gardens. In April, Morrison moved into Hilltop Community Resource's the Fountains assisted living community.

“This gal has seen quite a life,” Susan Morrison said. “She has seen everything from the horse and buggy to the space shuttle.

“She's flabbergasted that you can put a full-length movie on an i-Pod.”

Morrison never bothered learning how to use a computer.

“I don't have the faintest idea and don't even want to try,” she said.

She knows how to cook and raise flowers though.

“She's been like a mom to me,” Susan Morrison said. “She gave me a lot of help in my newlywed days.”

Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.