The huts are random blips along rural roads.
Simple structures with a big purpose: to keep children warm while waiting for the bus and away from the edge of country roads where cars fly by.
The roof protects from rain. Walls buffer winds. Inside, a seat to relax during those dark Washington mornings when it seems more like nighttime.
Many rural bus shelters are handmade of scrap wood for a shelf-life to last through the school years. Now there are companies selling prefab models and DIY sites with snazzy designs and tips to add mirrors, shelves, backpack hooks and chalkboards. Some modern-style “waiting pods” even have electricity, so kids can charge up their devices.
Still, rural bus shelters are typically more plywood blurs than roadside attractions.
But there’s one that’s hard to miss for those who venture northwest of the Lakewood Crossing retail complex along 178th Street NE.
The tiny purplish cottage with cream trim has flower boxes in the windows, a concave roof and bowed eves. On birthdays and holidays, there’s a helium balloon or two tied outside in celebration.
Gene Rasmussen made the shelter for his granddaughters, Harley and Maggie Hansen, in memory of their grandmother, Kay Ellen Olson, who died in 2009.
He calls it a “chalet.”
It’s modeled after a whimsical garage by the Ballard Locks that he’d sketched for an art class in the 1960s after a return from serving in the Army. “It just made me smile to look at it,” Rasmussen said.
The fond memory stuck with him. Fast forward more than 40 years, when he saw a rural bus shelter that reminded him of it.
With two young granddaughters living on a 20-acre Snohomish County farm, he went to work to create his own happy structure, one that would shield the girls from the elements while waiting for the bus.
“The rest is history,” he said.
It was history slow in the making. Rasmussen, who lives in Stanwood, spent about two years building it in his spare time in a workshop at the Arlington farm.
“It took me longer to build the chalet as it would have a barn,” said Rasmussen, who has a real estate business. “I kept doing it and redoing until it came out the way I wanted it. My carpentry isn’t that good. I would measure once and cut twice.”
His granddaughters tried to rush him along.
“We were like, ‘Hey, it’s going to rain tomorrow. It’s going to rain all next week. You might want to work on it,?’” said Maggie, 14.
The girls had a small hand in it.
“We helped pick out the paint color,” said Harley, 17. “He’s color blind.”
Then there was the matter of getting it the 300 yards from the house to the street.
“He couldn’t figure out how to get it down to the bottom of the driveway, so he literally hooked it to his truck and dragged it all the way down,” Harley said.
“He made little metal sleds for it,” added Maggie.
It turned out perfect in every way.
“Sometimes when we’re running late for the bus we don’t have time to walk down so we ride our bikes down there and put our bikes in there,” said Harley.
Other days, she gets her caffeine fix in the chalet before school. “I can’t take coffee on the bus,” she said.
Maggie’s vice: candy. “I used to stash candy in my pocket,” Maggie said. “I had a lot of wrappers in there.”
The girls often get to school by car these days. Harley, a junior at Lakewood High School, drives Maggie, who is a freshman.
The doors to the chalet stay open.
“The neighbor kids, they wait in it, too,” Harley said. “It gets used.”
The girls say their grandma would have been honored by the chalet.
“She was a very fancy lady,” Harley said. “She loved the glam, the jewelry, the big animal jackets, pointy shoes. She loved the farm.”
To Rasmussen, it’s the gift that keeps giving.
“It makes people happy to see it,” he said. “I want to lighten anybody’s day who drives by.”
He quotes an old Western song: “We’re not here for a long time; We’re here for a good time.”
Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @reporterbrown.
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