Havre, Montana, population 9621. An oft-photographed sign near the station explains that the city was named after two men had a fight over a woman, one lost, and said to the other, "You can have-'er." Talk about 'er jokes.

Havre is another service stop. The squat rectangular brick station feels 1970ish in decor, and is mixed-use between Amtrak and the host railroad. In a contrast of fortunes of freight and passenger rail, the host railroad has a large banner with its new logo, but Amtrak has a small sign with the old pointless-arrow logo that has already been phased out. Only this one passenger train passes by per day in each direction, so the ticket counter is small and the train status board is a cardboard sign. A far cry from the bustling passenger railroads of Chicago or the Northeast.

Havre is only about thirty miles from the Canadian border. A pair of Border Patrol agents, dressed in green with hats so that I mistook them for National Park Service rangers in some kind of new uniform, approaches me and asks if I am a US citizen. "Yes, I am." That seems to satisfy them, though I'm not quite sure how this proves that I'm not an illegal immigrant who'd been coached in a few common English phrases.

Reflecting the red-state/blue-state divide (or perhaps just a coincidence), two sixtyish women, both Caucasian, witness this incident. One from Washington state feels compelled to chime in and soothe my feelings. She explains that, from observations on her previous trips, it appears the Border Patrol agents really do select people more or less at random. While discussing this point, a woman from North Dakota opines, "Do we look like we're not citizens? He does."