http://www.mywesttexas.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17416296&BRD=2288&PAG=461&dept_id=475626&rfi=611/03/2006
Former Ranger Jackson recounts Richards' ire
Bob Campbell - Staff Writer
Midland Reporter-Telegram
Retired Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson on Thursday said the late former Gov.
Ann Richards had a colorful first response when asked to endorse his 2005 autobiography, "One Ranger, a Memoir."
Addressing 120 people at a Midland Association of Retired School Personnel luncheon at the First Baptist Church Fellowship Hall, the 71-year-old Alpine resident said Richards told co-writer David Marion Wilkinson, "Tell that old (pejorative) I'll write a blurb for his book, but I know he resigned from the Rangers because of me.
"Tell him I know he rode his horse from Amarillo to Austin to turn in his Ranger's badge and I don't appreciate it!"
Jackson joked he only rode from Alpine to Austin in 1993 but then said he actually "drove in a Jeep Cherokee."
Having served in the Department of Public Safety and Rangers for 36 years, he retired because Richards had forced the Rangers to hire two unqualified women when other women officers in Texas were well qualified, he said.
Jackson also related a story of the governor's taking a prominent attorney with her to Washington during her term from 1991-95 to demand President Clinton pay the federal government's share of the super collider project near Waxahachie. "She shook her finger at him and said, 'Look, pal, you owe the state of Texas $175 million and if you don't pay up, we're going to sue you!'"
He said Richards, who died Sept. 13, was asked to recommend the book because the publishers thought "you need a strong woman" to go with the blurbs of actor Tom Selleck and writers Elmer Kelton, Bill Wittliff, Mike Cox, Jan Reid and John Milius.
Jackson said he agreed she was a good choice but added, "God knows, all women are strong."
He and new co-writer James L. Haley are working on a sequel, "One Ranger Returns," now that the first University of Texas Press book has sold 30,000 copies and gone into its seventh printing.
Jackson said the new tome will reprise the Rangers' controversial role in a 1966-67 farm workers' strike in the Rio Grande Valley. "I believe in telling it like it was and we were not strike breakers or the Mexican Ku Klux Klan," he said.
Wearing a white jacket and wide-brimmed felt cowboy hat, the mustachioed 6-foot-5 former officer said two of its chapters are "All the Dogs I've Loved Before," reminiscing about his favorite pets and some who weren't so lovable, and "By the Light of the Rustler's Moon," reviewing his numerous investigations into cattle thefts.
"A rustler's moon is a half moon because a full moon gives too much light," he said. "The cattle bed down out of the shadows for protection from predators, but they don't think about human predators."
He said Selleck, a fellow National Rifle Association board member who hunts in the Alpine area, is being considered to play the lead role in a movie based on "One Ranger, a Memoir."
Accompanied by his wife Shirley and sister, Dorothy Moring of Midland, Jackson quipped, "Shirley says if they choose Tom Selleck to play me, she wants to play herself."
Richards' endorsement said, "Joaquin told me the West Texas weather is so dry and hard on women that his wife put Crisco on her face. That is the colorful story telling you can expect in this book -- really wonderful tales told in true Texas language."
