Rick Perry's tough home in Texas' "big empty"
The list includes such varied places as Hope and Plains, Tampico and Cove Gap, Niles and Waxhaw. And if things go Rick Perry's way, the next addition to the list of hometowns of the presidents will be Paint Creek.
That's Paint Creek, Texas, a place so small that CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports it stumped the GPS.
Deep in the Lone Star State, in the middle of the middle of nowhere, lies the community of Paint Creek. It is a place of quiet roads, vast horizons, merciless heat, and a few other things like rattlesnakes, scorpions and fire ants.
Wallar Overton is a wheat farmer without a crop this year because of a drought as bad as any can remember. But even in good times, it's a struggle in Paint Creek. Some like Overton, however, say they prefer the hard life.
CBSNews.com special report: Election 2012There is a main street in Paint Creek, and a small center in the community. To say it's small is an understatement. It's part of what Texans call "the big empty."
The school, pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, has 160 students. The football team is six to a side. There's no post office, no grocery, and no claim to fame -- until now.
This is where Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry grew up, graduated 3rd in a class of 13, and met his wife.
His parents still raise cotton here -- or try.
"You know what I learned growing up on the farm was a way of life: It was centered on hard work and on faith and on thrift," Perry said in his candidate announcement video.
Wallar Overton was in the Boy Scouts like Perry, and says those values abide.
"The community takes care of you. You feel secure here. It's the best place to raise children that you'll ever find," Overton said.
Phil Coleman played football with the future governor.
"We're not money rich, but you know you don't have to have money to be happy," Coleman said.
There's a difference of opinion in Paint Creek about Rick Perry's appeal as a candidate, and some are frankly surprised he's running. But just about everybody recognizes a certain self-sufficiency in Perry that's bred into people out here -- lessons that might come in handy in Washington.
"You learn that nothing happens without you doing it, or being involved in it," Overton said.
In this tiny outpost on the Texas flatland, it's easy to see why that may be so. It's a long way to Washington, but people here are taught at an early age that no goal is beyond reach.
