60 Minutes (1968) s45e25 Episode Script

Very little is known about a sensitive mission being carried out by a hundred U.
S.
Special Operations troops deep in the jungles of central Africa.
They've joined several thousand African soldiers in one of the biggest manhunts that's ever taken place.
Their goal is to help kill or capture the world's most wanted warlord, Joseph Kony and destroy his army.
This mission is part of a broader U.
S.
effort to counter the emerging threat to America from the growth of terrorist networks across Africa.
Joseph Kony has been on a murderous rampage that has lasted almost three decades, killing thousands and building one of the biggest armies of child soldiers in history.
Kony started out in northern Uganda, but his campaign has spread to four countries and he's now operating in this vast, lawless area in the center of Africa.
Our story, which includes images you may find disturbing, begins in the Central African Republic, with an elite tracking team from the Ugandan military that's searching for Kony in some of the most remote jungle on Earth.
You don't have to spend much time here to understand why it's so hard to find Joseph Kony.
It's as isolated and unforgiving as it gets.
The undergrowth so thick, every step is a battle.
When our producer Jeff Newton joined this Ugandan "tracking team," they'd been searching for Kony and his army, called the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, for three months, tracking them the way you would an animal.
Lukumbo: Right now, we are searching for the enemy tracks.
Jeff Newtown: Footprints? Lukumbo: Yes, the footmarks of the LRA.
Twenty-seven-year-old Lt.
Kasim Lukumbo's sole mission for the past three years has been finding Kony and he's one of the Ugandan army's top trackers.
The footprints are the first sign they've seen of Kony's army in six days.
As they followed the trail, the soldiers whispered so as not to give away their positions.
After an hour they reached this stream, but the tracks disappeared into the water.
Jeff Newton: No LRA? Ugandan soldier: "No LRA.
Let's go back.
" There were no Green Berets on this mission.
They do go out on operations like this, but they prefer to stay in the background.
Keeping a low profile is part of the U.
S.
strategy.
Kurt Crytzer: They're the lead.
They've always been the lead.
We're relatively new here.
We've only been here just about a year.
It's really an African problem.
It's being handled by Africans.
Col.
Kurt Crytzer, a veteran Green Beret of endless jungle, where the area they're searching is as big as Texas.
He took command of the U.
S.
Special Operations mission here not long after President Obama decided to send in troops 18 months ago.
Kurt Crytzer: The environment is some of the most unforgiving on planet Earth.
When you get to the jungle, 50 feet in you disappear.
Lara Logan: You're like a ghost.
Video courtesy of Ugandan Defense Press Unit, Republic of Uganda, ITN Source and Media Africa Kurt Crytzer: You're like a ghost.
Joseph Kony was 26 when he disappeared into the jungle, more than 25 years ago.
Since then, his army has wiped out entire villages and burned houses down with children inside.
They're known for cutting off the ears and lips of innocent people as a way to terrify them into submission.
And no one has suffered more than the children -- the State Department says Kony's army has abducted more than 25 into a harem of sex slaves and wives.
This video of Kony addressing his followers is one of the few times he's been filmed.
He's from a religious family in northern Uganda, an altar boy who became a witch doctor.
When he started out, he wanted his Lord's Resistance Army to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments, but he's broken almost every one of them and his army is little more than a murderous cult.
Kurt Crytzer: Some things you just can't turn your-- a blind eye to, and I believe this is one case of that.
Lara Logan: The U.
S.
turned a blind eye to Joseph Kony for more than 20 years.
Kurt Crytzer: I can't account for why we did or why we didn't come.
What I can tell you is we are here now.
Col.
Crytzer and his men are the bridge between four African armies, who are working to find Kony and his fighters.
These soldiers are from the Central African Republic where many people believe Kony might be hiding.
The Americans train them in their native French, using the language skills that come with being a Green Beret and they show them how to make the best of the little they have like using their beret as a field dressing or a stick as a makeshift tourniquet.
Col.
Crytzer says they have to know how to treat themselves or they die.
Kurt Crytzer: Our guys bring support in small numbers.
This is traditional advisory.
This is something that looks like two American advisers out with 40 Ugandans on a tracking team.
This is one guy going around throughout the villages building relationships.
Building relationships is central to the mission of Green Berets no matter where they are in the world.
To earn the trust of the locals in these villages, Col.
Crytzer's soldiers use their skills in unlikely ways - helping out at the local dentist and even delivering babies.
Together with diplomats from the State Department, they meet with the local tribes every day.
[SoF to villager: So I thank you very much for sharing the information with us helping provide the whereabouts of the LRA.
.]
They're trained to help and it's a chance to learn more about their targets.
Kurt Crytzer: If you think about our experiences with Osama bin Laden, we had some of the best platforms in the world flying in all the wrong places for eight years.
In the end, it was human intelligence that led to him.
In the end, it's gonna be human intelligence here that leads to Joseph Kony.
He told us some of the best human intelligence has come from those closest to Kony - like this man captured by Ugandan forces last year, Major General Caesar Acellam.
The Ugandan military granted us a rare interview with him.
He's the highest-ranking LRA commander ever to be taken alive and knows more than almost anybody about what Kony's doing today.
Caesar Acellam: Kony is only struggling for survival.
Lara Logan: As Kony fights for his survival he's still killing people.
He's still terrorizing villages.
Caesar Acellam: Yes, he's doing it.
Acellam - who claims he was abducted as a young man - spent 20 years with Kony and for much of that time he was his Chief of Intelligence.
We pressed him on the role he played in the countless atrocities carried out in Kony's name.
Lara Logan: You were part of an army that abducted children, that taught children to kill in a terrible way, to beat people to death, to crush their skulls, where young girls were raped.
Did you witness that? Caesar Acellam: I would say in a sense.
Lara Logan: Not in a sense.
Yes or no? Caesar Acellam: There were a number of things that you might not have wanted to do.
But you do it.
And all these people were doing atrocities, do it under Kony's instruction.
Lara Logan: Including you? Caesar Acellam: Under Kony's instructions.
Lara Logan: Including you? Caesar Acellam: Yes.
Acellam told us Kony rules by fear and claims he has mystical powers -- a formidable combination in the minds of children he kidnaps.
These young men were all soldiers in his army, rescued just a few months ago in the Central African Republic and brought home to northern Uganda.
They were all younger than 13 when they were taken from their families.
Franklin: We were told this was God's war.
So out of fear of God, I believed everything I was told, and I followed.
Franklin, Dennis and James all described a bizarre religious ceremony they had to undergo when they were initiated into Kony's army.
James: When you just arrive they smear some oil in the shape of a cross on your forehead here and on your chest and your back.
And that's supposed to change you.
Lara Logan: Does it work? James: Yes it works.
It changes you completely.
Dennis: It numbs any thought you may have.
It kills everything.
You just listen to what Joseph Kony says.
And what Kony and his commanders told these young men to do - is almost beyond description.
Franklin: If a new abductee tries to escape, all of children were ordered to bite them to death.
Lara Logan: They would bite them with their teeth? Franklin: Yes, until they died.
Betty Bigombe: They were robbed of their rights as children.
Lara Logan: And robbed of their innocence.
Betty Bigombe: Robbed of their innocence.
Betty Bigombe has spent more than two decades trying to help Uganda's child soldiers return to their families.
She told us this is what northern Uganda looked like just a few years ago - entire villages of children on the move, driven by fear and walking for miles to sleep in a place where Kony's army couldn't snatch them from their beds.
For years they would do this every night, and return home in the morning.
Betty Bigombe: You look at these children and say they cannot feel secure to think I can sleep without thinking of anybody coming in to abduct or to kill them.
Lara Logan: Did you hate Kony for what he'd done? Betty Bigombe: Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Yet for many years, she's been the driving force behind the Ugandan government's efforts to make peace with Kony.
When she first tried to contact him, he responded by sending her a message that was delivered in the most horrifying way.
Betty Bigombe: I was faced with five people.
They'd been amputated and given letters to bring to me.
Lara Logan: Five people with their limbs hacked off with a letter for you that says what? Betty Bigombe: They letter was all very bloody.
The letter was saying that they were coming to kill me.
I should stop mobilizing people against them.
Lara Logan: But that didn't put you off? That didn't stop you? Betty Bigombe: No, if anything, it gave me even more determination.
Kony finally agreed to meet with her in 1994.
To find him deep in the jungle, she says she had to walk for hours, escorted by his child soldiers.
Betty Bigombe: The speed at which they move in this jungles is amazing.
They literally glide in.
You see dust.
And when he was coming, my God the drama.
Bigombe, who you see here, gave us this video of the meeting.
Betty Bigombe: His supporters were dressed like nuns.
And then they were singing and then others would drop down, that the demon was coming.
So many things happening at the same time and of course you look at this: "My God, where am I? What's going on in here?" Now when I'm seeing him sitting right there, I'm thinking, "I wish I could just open his brain and understand why he does what he does.
" Bigombe left that meeting without a peace deal and today, the U.
S.
is pouring millions into getting Kony's soldiers to give up.
Caesar Acellam who once stood at Kony's side, is at the center of that effort, working with the very enemy he once fought.
He's hoping for amnesty and is now the face -- and the voice -- of this campaign, recording messages that are then broadcast over areas of the jungle where Kony's soldiers are believed to be hiding.
And when Col.
Crytzer's men hand out leaflets to the villagers to distribute in the jungle, it's Acellam's face they see.
Kurt Crytzer: You have a picture of Caesar Acellam on there.
That's pretty powerful.
Lara Logan: So the idea is if members of the LRA see someone who was as senior as Ceasar Acellam and he's safe and well that that will convince people that there's a safe way out of this? Kurt Crytzer: That's correct.
Col.
Crytzer says he knows its working because Kony's soldiers have been defecting in increasing numbers, and his army is down to just a few hundred men.
Recently the Ugandans and the Americans temporarily suspended their hunt in the Central African Republic, because of political unrest, but not before Ugandan soldiers killed Kony's chief bodyguard close to where we filmed them; a sign that Joseph Kony's days may finally be numbered.
Lara Logan: How has one man been able to evade so many forces for so long? Kurt Crytzer: He's a survivor.
He's not an admirable human being, but he's an admirable adversary.
Lara Logan: Do you think you and the Ugandans are getting closer to Kony? Kurt Crytzer: I believe we are.
I can now wake up in the morning honestly and say, "Is today the day?" Last year R.
A.
Dickey won baseball's Cy Young Award, making him the National League's number one pitcher.
What's astonishing is that he won the award as a knuckleballer, something no other knuckleballer has ever done.
An umpire once described the pitch as something hitters can't hit, coaches can't coach and pitchers can't control.
What's unique about Dickey is that he's managed not only to control it -- much of the time -- he's off to a rocky start this year, but he also puts some sauce and speed on it.
Dickey has had a challenging life.
He was abused as a child and once he got into baseball, he moved around as a journeyman in the minors for most of 14 years before he perfected the knuckleball.
Then last year at age 37, when most players have already retired, he had the season of his life.
Lesley Stahl: You had 20 wins, 11 in a row.
R.
A.
Dickey: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: I mean, that's pretty unheard of for any pitcher, forget a knuckleballer.
R.
A.
Dickey: Well, let's just say I was enjoying coming to the park.
It was fun coming to the park.
Lesley Stahl: You're living your dream.
R.
A.
Dickey: Yeah, it was a magical year for me.
And he did it almost exclusively with the knuckleball, which he throws 90 percent of the time.
Curve balls curve, cutters cut.
The knuckleball? It bobbles, it dips and dances so much that it's hard to catch.
Lesley Stahl: Could you show us the difference between the fastball and the knuckleball - what the motion looks like? R.
A.
Dickey: Yeah, sure.
Be glad to.
This is the fastball: see how it spins all the way to the catcher's mitt.
Now watch the near total absence of spin in R.
A.
's knuckleball.
From the time the ball leaves his hand it rotates a mere quarter of one revolution.
It's a pitch that's devilishly hard to control.
Lesley Stahl: Why do they even call it a knuckleball? R.
A.
Dickey: When you see the ball coming at you see- the hitter sees your knuckles and it's different than any other pitch thrown.
You for sure throw it with your fingernails.
Lesley Stahl: So with other pitchers there are "tells.
" And the batter knows that right before so and so throws a fastball he scratches his ear or whatever.
But it doesn't matter with you, right? They all know you're going to throw the knuckleball.
R.
A.
Dickey: They know what they're getting.
I know what I'm throwing.
It's just a matter of, "Can I throw a good one?" When he does throw a good one, its trajectory is so unpredictable, it's one of the hardest pitches to hit.
[Announcer #1: Oh, look at that.
Announcer #2: Jeez.
Announcer #1: What are you going to do with that?!.]
Some batters are hypnotized by it.
Others lose their balance or their bats.
[Announcer #1: And Utley loses the bat going after that knuckleball!.]
Lesley Stahl: It floats.
It flits.
Aerodynamics professors, they don't even know for sure what's going on with the air currents and all of that.
R.
A.
Dickey: Yeah, well that means that it's magic.
[Announcer #1: 14:28:05 That one shimmied.
Announcer #2: It's like oscillating back and forth.
.]
R.
A.
Dickey: If I throw a bad knuckleball, you could hit it.
If I throw a good knuckleball-- Lesley Stahl: You can't hit it-- R.
A.
Dickey: Nobody-- Lesley Stahl: --and there's nothing in-between-- R.
A.
Dickey: Nobody's hitting it-- yeah, nobody's hitting it.
Lesley Stahl: Well, have you ever hit off of a knuckleballer yourself? R.
A.
Dickey: No.
Only in a video game.
I've never - I mean, because I'm the only one left.
He's the only one throwing the knuckleball in the big leagues today.
And the one who's put the pitch on the map.
His season last year with the New York Mets was one for the books - and the fans loved him.
So it came as a shocker in December when the team decided to trade him.
R.
A.
Dickey: I don't think I was hurt as much as I just was sad about it because that is the place that I came to redeem my careerin a lot of ways, well, in every way really.
I had finally had a parking place you know.
Which took me, what 14 years to get a parking place? Lesley Stahl: You have to say to yourself: What do I have to do? I won the Cy Young Award.
What did they want from me? R.
A Dickey: Yeah, I certainly had that conversation with myself and my agent.
He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays who signed R.
A.
for three years and $30 million, all guaranteednot bad for a country boy from the poor side of Nashville.
Lesley Stahl: So this is the house where you grew up? R.
A.
Dickey: Yeah, right here, 247.
He had a lonely and difficult childhood herewith his mother, an alcoholic, who worked several jobs to make ends meet.
Lesley Stahl: So she was a single mom.
Your dad didn't help? R.
A Dickey: You know, my dad moved out when I was little.
Seven or so.
Lesley Stahl: You saw things that were hard with your mother? R.
A.
Dickey: Alcohol was prevalent.
There were confrontations.
There was -- ya know, my mom fell asleep at night when I might need her on the couch.
Or, you know, things like that.
Just-- it was hard.
But the real darkness of his childhood started when he was 8 and left in the care of a babysitter.
All he wanted to do was watch cartoons.
But she led him upstairs into the bedroom.
R.
A.
Dickey: The word that I would use to describe being abused by the babysitter is confused, not knowing at all how to process it, scared to death, because here was a caretaker committing this act.
Lesley Stahl: And it happened more than once? R.
A.
Dickey: It happened over that summer about, I'd say about four times.
Lesley Stahl: And you didn't tell anybody? R.
A.
Dickey: No, because there's a part of it that feels so wicked.
You feel like you've been a part of it in some way.
And so you don't say anything, at least I don't.
I didn't.
Lesley Stahl: You didn't.
R.
A.
Dickey: And that was a mistake.
But the babysitter abuse was only the prelude.
Later that year, he was playing near a rundown garage - when a stranger - a male this time, raped him.
R.
A.
Dickey: It was so much more physical, you know.
It was a strong man, like holding you down kind of stuff, it wasn't-- it was just really awful.
Lesley Stahl: You're still 8? R.
A.
Dickey: I'm 8 years old.
But I'll never forget knowing what was fixing to happen to me.
And just wanting it to be over with and going, just going limp, like- Lesley Stahl: And giving - submitting - R.
A.
Dickey: Giving up, like giving into it.
And I think I had a lot of shame about that.
Lesley Stahl: What is the shame, if you're the abused one? R.
A.
Dickey: The shame is that you didn't speak up, that you didn't have a voice, that you were in that position to begin with, that you didn't run away, that you in some way might have invited it.
There's all kinds of things that play tricks on your mind.
He says he buried all that shame, all his secretsbut it turned him into a kid who was full of anger.
His one outlet was sports.
He was a gifted athlete, and that proved to be his ticket out.
R.
A.
Dickey: This is a pretty special place.
It was for me.
When he was 13, he was admitted to one of Nashville's top prep schools on a full scholarship.
This is where he found structure and discipline and met a classmate's sister, Anne, who he proposed to back then.
Anne Dickey: You know a 12-year-old girl doesn't forget that! I don't know if- R.
A.
Dickey: I pulled out my ace, right at the beginning.
Here's my ace card.
Lesley Stahl: Here's my ace.
You proposed at 13-- Anne Dickey: I know.
I don't know what I really thought of it.
I probably was like, "Ooh, this is crazy.
" They waited 'til after his junior year in college when the Texas Rangers made him the team's number-one draft choice, with a signing bonus of $810,000.
But before he signed on the dotted line, the team's trainer saw this photograph of Dickey on the 1996 U.
S.
Olympics team and thought that his throwing arm was bent at a funny angle.
So, he sent R.
A.
for an MRI that found--- R.
A.
Dickey: I didn't have the existence of an ulnar collateral ligament in my right elbow, which is the ligament that holds the elbow together.
Lesley Stahl: The Texas Rangers said, "Without the ligament, we don't want you.
" R.
A Dickey: I was sitting across from the general manager of the Rangers and he said, "You know, we don't think we want to sign you now.
" And it was all I could do.
It took a supernatural peace to-- for me to not to leap over the desk and pummel him.
Eventually the Rangers offered him a contract, but for a lot less money: only $75,000.
He started out as a classic fastball pitcher.
But he kept flopping on the big league mound and being sent back to the minors.
Lesley Stahl: You'd be great in the minors.
And they'd call you up and then you'd get into the big leagues and boom.
R.
A.
Dickey: Yeah, no, that's-- you're right.
Lesley Stahl: Everyone's hitting home runs off of you.
R.
A.
Dickey: Yeah, thanks for reminding me.
Anne Dickey: Yeah, that one year.
In the first 10 years of his career, he spent all but two seasons in the minors, earning as little as $11,000 a year, and dragging his wife and their growing family from one minor league town to the next.
Lesley Stahl: It's kind of a stunning thing that you just didn't say to him one day: "Come on, this is it.
We have children now.
It's enough.
" Anne Dickey: I think I was just as stubborn as he was.
You know-- just we'd given up a lot.
And why stop now? And "Let's see what-- let's ride it out until somebody kicks us off the field.
" That time came in 2005 when his fastball began to lose steam and Orel Hershiser, then the Rangers' pitching coach, called him in to a meeting and told him-- R.
A.
Dickey: I wasn't good enough.
And if I was ever gonna make it, I had to do something different.
Lesley Stahl: So the word knuckleball comes out of Oral Hershiser's mouth at you and you think? R.
A.
Dickey: The first emotion I had was, "Are they telling me that what I've done for anymore?" And that's a hard pill to swallow.
But it was an ultimatum: the knuckleball or you're out.
So he stayed in AAA and had to teach himself the pitch, since there was no coach in the majors who knew how to throw it.
He finally got to show it off in 2006, in a game against the Detroit Tigers.
R.
A.
Dickey: You know, I had all these hopes that came with this pitch of rejuvenation and, you know, redemption.
And then I tie a modern day major league record for the most home runs given up in a game.
Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: Not a game, a couple of innings, huh? R.
A.
Dickey: Three and two-thirds innings.
[Announcer: Here's the pitch and Shelton rips one to the left.
Gone! And that's going to be it for R.
A.
Dickey.
.]
R.
A.
Dickey: Six home runs.
Yeah.
And that was-- that was devastating to say the least.
Devastating, and the beginning of a long slide down, on the diamond, and in his soul.
He felt inadequate and angry, and his marriage was in trouble: Anne caught him cheating, and he got depressed.
So he went into therapy which naturally led right back to the childhood abuse.
R.
A.
Dickey: It was the first time that I'd ever kind of gone back and connected with that boy, you know.
And I don't cry very much, Lesley, but I cried.
And it was hard.
But I enjoyed it.
I started to enjoy risking that, because I felt like I was being freed up in some way.
He invited his wife to join him in therapy, and told her for the first time about the abuse.
Lesley Stahl: You had no idea? Anne Dickey: Yeah.
I used to say, "Well, how come you didn't trust me?" You know? And, and he'd say, "I didn't trust anybody, you know? I didn't trust anybody.
" He says the therapy, along with his Christian faith, helped turn his life around at home and at the ballpark.
He was able to concentrate almost obsessively on his pitch over the next two years, he threw the knuckleball thousands of times, and when he wasn't throwing the ball, he was gripping it, even as he drove.
Lesley Stahl: Do you think that if you hadn't had the breakthrough in therapy that you would have had the one in baseball? R.
A.
Dickey: No, I think they had to happen simultaneously.
He says he became a more attentive father of his four children and a better husband.
He recently reconciled with his mother, who is now sober.
And he's become involved in a Christian charity in India that tries to save children and young women who've been trafficked in the sex trade.
In January, he went to Mumbai to raise awareness of the charity.
[R.
A.
Dickey: Hello, nice to meet you.
.]
One of the prostitutes approached R.
A.
and the founder of the charity.
R.
A.
Dickey: She came up and said that her life was already ruined, but could you take my child.
And this woman was 25 years old.
To think that there is a woman that's 25 years old that thinks that her life is over.
"Would you just take my daughter, please?" Lesley Stahl: But you understand? R.
A.
Dickey: Oh yeah, I completely understand.
The charity is now providing counseling and health care for the woman and her daughter.
R.
A.
has raised over $130,000 for the group, Bombay Teen Challenge, which used the money to open this health clinic.
He says he's a new man: liberated and reborn.
And yet he had a disastrous outing last Sunday when he broke a fingernail in the first inning against the Red Sox.
[Announcer: Not the way R.
A.
Dickey wanted to start his Blue Jays career.
.]
A broken nail can derail a knuckleballer, but R.
A.
knows the season is long, and like his pitch, full of zigs and zags -- ups and downs.
It sometimes seems America is a country hopelessly divided -- by class, by politics, by culture.
Tonight, we go to a remote place where few have trodden before -- Marfa, Texas -- for a lesson in artful coexistence.
Marfa is in cattle country, the high desert of far West Texas.
Like many small towns, it's come close to extinction.
But today, Marfa lives on, is even thriving: its renaissance spurred by the arrival of a host of young, cutting edge artists.
Mixing cowboys and culture might seem like a bad idea, but it's made Marfa a capital of quirkiness.
And it's produced a harmony as sweet as the country music that fills the air.
Out on the lone prairie -- a 200-mile drive from the nearest airport -- stands Marfa, population 2,000.
The train doesn't stop here anymore, and at first glance the place may look half dead.
But look closer.
Marfa today is an eccentric Tex-Mex stew of art galleries, tourists, cowboys and characters.
Dan Dunlap: It's a freedom loving town.
People are allowed just to live and let live.
As mayor, Dan Dunlap presides over a town where old Marfans saddle up to ride the range and the new ones paint and sculpt.
All in a very quiet place.
Morley Safer: Crime a problem? Dan Dunlap: No sir, crime is not a problem.
Morley Safer: When was the last murder you had in Marfa? Dan Dunlap: Can't remember.
[Coen brothers: And action.
.]
Well, there was one.
The Coen brothers shot their movie "No Country For Old Men" outside town.
They needed a local to murder, one with some acting experience.
Chip Love: I told them I was in "The Wizard of Oz" in high school and they said, "That's perfect.
" So Chip Love - a local banker - found himself face-to-face with that loco hombre Javier Bardem.
Morley Safer: It's pretty unusual for the town's leading banker - Chip Love: Yeah, I'm the town's leading banker.
The only one, yeah.
Morley Safer: - to get shot in the head by a crazed crook.
Chip Love: Well, I think a lot of people would like to see their banker shot right now.
Actually, the movies and Marfa go way back.
In 1955, the Texas epic "Giant" was filmed here.
And townspeople got to watch Rock Hudson roping, James Dean riding, and Elizabeth Taylor - well, just being Elizabeth Taylor.
There's a shrine to the movie in Marfa's Paisano Hotel.
Chip Love: It was about cattle.
It was about ranches.
It was about the things that we hold dear.
But these days, watching the passing parade, you're not quite sure if you're in Mayberry or Greenwich Village.
For old Marfans, there's the gun show.
For new Marfans, a symposium on politics, culture, climate and sustainability.
And, for reasons we weren't able to pin down - adolescent hula dancers.
Buck Johnston: I mean, it's nutty.
It's just this cultural little hub in the middle of nowhere.
We think it's the best small town in America.
Camp Bosworth: Don't tell anybody.
Edit that out, please.
Buck Johnston: That's right.
Camp Bosworth and Buck Johnston are members in good standing of the Marfa new wave.
Their gallery packed with Camp's Texas-size wood carvings.
Camp Bosworth: This is a six-shooter, it's gold leaf.
And this turns, you know, I've carved it with various details There's also the pistol that doubles as a bar.
Morley Safer: You've got lots of tequila.
Camp Bosworth: Yeah, lots of tequila.
A few blocks away, painter Ann Marie Nafziger is hard at work.
An Ohio native who moved here from Portland, Oregon.
Morley Safer: Your first trip to Marfa, what did you make of the place? Ann Marie Nafziger: I was astounded by the landscape coming in.
The land and the light.
It's an incredible place to look at as a painter.
I love living here.
[Maryam Amiryani: With the Elvis.]
Maryam Amiryani paints still lifes and cultural icons.
She was born in Iran, traveled the world, and wound up in Marfa.
Maryam Amiryani: My husband and I wanted to move somewhere to live a simple life close to nature, to paint more.
Morley Safer: What did this place have that others might not have had? Maryam Amiryani: It just seemed a bit more extreme.
And that appealed to us.
[Music: Welcome to West Texas.]
If you want extreme, try the weather in Marfa.
[Music: dust clouds, a tornado or two.]
It's best described as: all over the map.
[Music: Well the wind outside is howlin', coyotes cry in fear, welcome to West Texas, you're gonna like it here.
.]
Chip Love: I've always been amazed at the courage these people have that come out here and not really sure how they're going to make a living.
And they just show up because it feels right.
The new Marfans have transformed the place.
Padre's, the local watering hole, was once a funeral parlor.
Ballroom Marfa, a gallery, was a Mexican dance hall.
Camp and Buck live in a converted church.
And there are further signs this is not your grandfather's Marfa.
[Yoga teacher: Exhale, forward, fold.]
Yoga fans can catch up on their chakras and their downward dogs at the town bookstore.
And also read up on abstract expressionism.
Tim Johnson - a poet/philosopher - runs the place.
Morley Safer: This is a remarkably big bookshop for a very small town.
Tim Johnson: Yeah, it really is.
We have like a poetry reading.
Ah, which is strange, and it has something to do with the fact that there are basically no other competing entertainment options.
There's not much competition on the road, either.
Marfa has one stop light.
The next one is 56 miles away.
Camp Bosworth: Every now and then you'll have to wait for, like, five cars.
And you really do find yourself going-- Buck Johnston: What is goin' on? Camp Bosworth: What is goin' on? Buck Johnston: Who let the traffic out? [Announcer: You are tuned to KRTS, Marfa 93.
5 FM.
.]
It's also just about the smallest town anywhere to have its own public radio station.
Tom Michael: If cattle could fill out pledge forms, we would have a station.
Manager Tom Michael says in Marfa, public radio is really public.
Volunteers serve as DJs.
Listeners find themselves on the air.
Tom Michael: You know, we got some great cranks in West Texas, sweet curmudgeons.
We really love hearing from them.
Morley Safer: Tell me about some of them.
Tom Michael: Tuggy Lancaster.
She passed away last year.
She would call up and say, "My donkeys want to hear classical and jazz.
" Ellery Aufdengarten is a local rancher born and bred in the wide open spaces.
Ellery Aufdengarten: I mean, how can you beat this? Look.
It doesn't get any better than this.
He might well agree with Churchill who said there's something about the outside of a horse that's good for the inside of a man.
And though he admits to understanding cattle better than understanding modern art, he gives the new artistic Marfans a tip of his Stetson.
Morley Safer: You think it's been good for the town? Ellery Aufdengarten: I would have to say yes.
I mean, I don't know what it would have looked like if they hadn't come.
Morley Safer: Do you mix at all with the artsy people? Ellery Aufdengarten: Yeah.
Yeah.
Morley Safer: What do you make of 'em? Ellery Aufdengarten: It's kinda like bird watchin' sometimes.
In a way, all the creative souls who've landed here are the spiritual descendants of this man: the late Donald Judd, an artist who headed west in the 1970s.
Rob Weiner: He wanted to get out of New York City.
It had become too claustrophobic and he wanted to go to a place that was much more open, as far as the landscape was concerned.
And he loved the land.
Rob Weiner worked for Judd, who set up shop on a deserted Army base.
He's now associate director of a museum housing works by Judd and other minimalist artists.
Rob Weiner: Judd wanted a kind of museum that would give a different experience of how the art and the architecture and the landscape work together.
Today, antelope play among Judd's boxes.
Boxes, little boxes and bigger boxes, boxes all in a row, not made out of ticky-tacky, but of concrete.
Joe Cabezuela: We don't understand the art.
It's different, you know.
We're used to portraits of cattle, windmills, cowboys-- Joe Cabezuela is a community leader among Marfa's Hispanics, who make up 75 percent of the town.
It's a place where tolerance once had its limits, depending on which side of the tracks you came from.
Joe Cabezuela: Back when I was growing up a Mexican kid couldn't go out with an Anglo girl.
I mean, it was, you know, they still went out.
The parents didn't know about it, but.
But these days, Anglos, Hispanics, tourists and Marfans old and new all rub elbows.
[Woman: Do you roast the jalapenos?.]
And most everybody agrees the newcomers have given Marfa a new face.
Joe Cabezuela: Marfa would have been a little old dusty town, had they not come in and sort of like revived it, you know.
Morley Safer: Has the economy improved for the Hispanic community? Joe Cabezuela: It has, because of the jobs, I believe.
And with the artists and the tourist dollars, the town now has not one, but two upscale restaurants.
At El Cosmico, sort of a hip trailer camp, you can sleep in a teepee or an airstream.
And if you decide to stay on, you'll quickly learn the basic facts of life in a very small town.
Number one: be nice.
Ann Marie Nafziger: There's a reliance on other people.
You should make sure you're getting along with your neighbor because you'll probably need them.
Number two: Everybody knows everybody else's business.
Tom Michaels: I mean, the joke is you don't need to put on your turn signal 'cause they know where you're going.
Morley Safer: So no secrets? Tom Michaels: No secrets.
And number three: no frills.
Rob Weiner: It's still a hardscrabble life style.
There's no pharmacy.
There's no dry cleaner.
It's hard to get things.
And newcomers can find the wide open spaces claustrophobic and the sound of silence deafening, especially if you're a transplanted New Yorker.
Morley Safer: How often do you have to get out of here? Rob Weiner: You know, between six and eight weeks, I'm usually ready for a jolt of city life.
And on your way out of town, you'll want to stop at the most bizarre spot in these parts.
There at sundown, like a desert mirage - is Prada Marfa.
Boyd Elder: There's been people stopping, thinking it's a store.
Slammin' on their brakes.
It's full of thousand dollar Italian shoes and $2,000 bags.
But the door is always locked.
As custodian Boyd Elder explains, Prada Marfa is not a store but a statement, put up in the middle of nowhere by two German artists.
Boyd Elder: They wanted to see what happened by putting it here.
To see if it would stay and to see what the results would be.
And they want some kind of like, public response to their art.
And they got it.
Pilgrims to Marfa can't resist a snapshot.
Beyonce, for instance, was swept off her feet.
Others weren't.
Boyd Elder: I mean, it's been vandalized.
Some people love it, other people hate it.
Morley Safer: What about the folks in Marfa? Boyd Elder: I think a lot of 'em think it's just a joke.
Morley Safer: What do you consider it to be? Boyd Elder: I consider it to be hilarious.
I consider it to be facetious.
I consider it to be neurotic.
[Music: Texas moon, shinin' bright.]
And so, we bid a fond farewell to the magic kingdom of Marfa.
Many moons ago, somebody named the place after a heroine in the novel "Crime and Punishment.
" But this Marfa has very little crime and thus virtually no punishment.
Except of course for the long and lonely road.