1880 Town was an ambitious re-creation of the Old West, covering more than fifty acres. There was a post office, dentist office, bank, pharmacy, jail, a one-room schoolhouse, a livery full of authentic horse wagons, and at least two dozen other buildings, the whole being even more ambitious than Montana’s Nevada City. The most peculiar exhibit was a live, pretzel-loving camel named Otis, who was corralled in a pasture behind the town’s church.

I didn’t plan to walk any farther that night, so I hung around the town for about an hour, long enough to wander through every building. When I’d seen all I cared to, I walked back to the diner car to get something to eat. There weren’t many other customers, just two families, and I sat at the opposite end of the train car, laying my pack on the red vinyl bench across from me. I looked over the menu, then sat back and waited until the waitress came over a few minutes later. She was young, with short red hair and a badge that read MOLLY.

“Hi,” she said. “Sorry for the wait. May I get you something to drink?”

“I’d like some water. A lot of it, like a carafe.”

“A what?”

“A pitcher,” I said. “A whole pitcher.”

“Okay. Do you know what you’d like to eat?”

“How’s your meat loaf?”

“It’s good. I had it for lunch.”

“I’ll have the meat loaf and the chef’s salad with Thousand Island dressing.”

She scribbled down my order. “You got it. I’ll be right back with your water and some bread.” She walked back to the kitchen.

Outside my window there was a Shell gas station. On the near side of the station was a family sitting on a grass patch next to their minivan. The father was looking at a map spread out over the hood of their car, while the mother assembled sandwiches for the three children. Watching them brought back memories of the family trips we took before my mother died.

My father, like me, was a sucker for tourist traps and probably would have stopped at the same places I had, the Petrified Gardens, Wall Drug, 1880 Town, all of them. As different as I had always thought I was from my father, I was discovering that there was still a lot of him in me.

Molly returned a moment later with a pitcher of water, a tall glass filled with ice, and a small plastic basket with a mini-loaf of bread and two foil-wrapped squares of butter. “There you go,” she said pleasantly. “Your meal will be right up.”

I looked back out the window at the family. The man was still bent over the map. The woman was now at his side, her hand resting on his back.