One Ranger: A Memoir

by H. Joaquin Jackson, David Marion Wilkinson

Overview

When his picture appeared on the cover of Texas Monthly, Joaquin Jackson became the icon of the modern Texas Rangers. Nick Nolte modeled his character in the movie Extreme Prejudice on him. Jackson even had a speaking part of his own in The Good Old Boys with Tommy Lee Jones. But the role that Jackson has always played the best is that of the man who wears the silver badge cut from a Mexican cinco peso coin—a working Texas Ranger. Legend says that one Ranger is all it takes to put down lawlessness and restore the peace—one riot, one Ranger. In this adventure-filled memoir, Joaquin Jackson recalls what it was like to be the Ranger who responded when riots threatened, violence erupted, and criminals needed to be brought to justice across a wide swath of the Texas-Mexico border from 1966 to 1993.

Jackson has dramatic stories to tell. Defying all stereotypes, he was the one Ranger who ensured a fair election—and an overwhelming win for La Raza Unida party candidates—in Zavala County in 1972. He followed legendary Ranger Captain Alfred Y. Allee Sr. into a shootout at the Carrizo Springs jail that ended a prison revolt—and left him with nightmares. He captured "The See More Kid," an elusive horse thief and burglar who left clean dishes and swept floors in the houses he robbed. He investigated the 1988 shootings in Big Bend's Colorado Canyon and tried to understand the motives of the Mexican teenagers who terrorized three river rafters and killed one. He even helped train Afghan mujahedin warriors to fight the Soviet Union.

Jackson's tenure in the Texas Rangers began when older Rangers still believed that law need not get in the way of maintaining order, and concluded as younger Rangers were turning to computer technology to help solve crimes. Though he insists, "I am only one Ranger. There was only one story that belonged to me," his story is part of the larger story of the Texas Rangers becoming a modern law enforcement agency that serves all the people of the state. It's a story that's as interesting as any of the legends. And yet, Jackson's story confirms the legends, too. With just over a hundred Texas Rangers to cover a state with 267,399 square miles, any one may become the one Ranger who, like Joaquin Jackson in Zavala County in 1972, stops one riot.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292716384
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	02/01/2007
Series:	Bridwell Texas History Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	613,873
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

H. Joaquin Jackson (1935-2016) retired from the Texas Rangers in 1993, after a twenty-seven-year career. In 2006, he was awarded the William Penn Award for public service by the Penn Club of Philadelphia.

David Marion Wilkinson is an award-winning writer whose most recent books are Oblivion's Altar, The Empty Quarter, and Not between Brothers.

Table of Contents

• Prologue
• Chapter One. Ice in August
• Chapter Two. Rider through the Storm
• Chapter Three. Order before Law
• Chapter Four. The Ghost and the Great Bear Hunt
• Chapter Five. The Reconquest of Aztlan
• Chapter Six. The Things I Carried
• Chapter Seven. For Love and Horses
• Chapter Eight. Earth, Fire, Water, and Blood: I
• Chapter Nine. Earth, Fire, Water, and Blood: II
• Chapter Ten. My Heroes Have Always Been Rangers: The Captain
• Chapter Eleven. A Goat and a Guitar
• Chapter Twelve. Just Folks
• Chapter Thirteen. My Heroes Have Always Been Rangers: Just a Ranger
• Chapter Fourteen. Desperadoes and Dumbasses
• Chapter Fifteen. With Friends Like These
• Chapter Sixteen. Moving Pictures
• Chapter Seventeen. A Slow, Cold Rain
• Chapter Eighteen. Saddle My Pony, Boys . . .
• Chapter Nineteen. El Último Grito
• Appendix One. In Black and White
• Appendix Two. Letter from the Reverend
• Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

A powerful, moving read. . . . One Ranger is as fascinating as the memoirs of nineteenth-century Rangers James Gillett and George Durham, and the histories by Frederick Wilkins and Walter Prescott Webb—and equally as important.

True West

Superb memoir . . . One Ranger is Jackson’s own story, a personal tale of adventure, service, love, grief, heartache, and hope. Yet embodied within its pages is the story of every Ranger—the pages of the book are thick with the weight of history. Jackson well knows his place in the continuum of the Texas Rangers, the history of Texas, and the epic of what is today the American Southwest.

America’s 1st Freedom

"The writing smacks of the truths that are hard-won from a lifetime of dealing out justice—sometimes on horseback, like the Lone Ranger used to do—in a lonesome terrain where your word is only as good as the gun and the reputation that back it up."

Texas Monthly

"A straight-shooting book that blow[s] a few holes in the Ranger myth while providing more ammunition for the myth’s continuation. . . . reads more like a novel than [an] autobiography . . ."

Austin American-Statesman

"The writing smacks of the truths that are hard-won from a lifetime of dealing out justice—sometimes on horseback, like the Lone Ranger used to do—in a lonesome terrain where your word is only as good as the gun and the reputation that back it up."

Texas Monthly

"Superb memoir . . . One Ranger is Jackson’s own story, a personal tale of adventure, service, love, grief, heartache, and hope. Yet embodied within its pages is the story of every Ranger—the pages of the book are thick with the weight of history. Jackson well knows his place in the continuum of the Texas Rangers, the history of Texas, and the epic of what is today the American Southwest."

America’s 1st Freedom

Superb memoir . . . One Ranger is Jackson’s own story, a personal tale of adventure, service, love, grief, heartache, and hope. Yet embodied within its pages is the story of every Ranger—the pages of the book are thick with the weight of history. Jackson well knows his place in the continuum of the Texas Rangers, the history of Texas, and the epic of what is today the American Southwest.

America’s 1st Freedom

Superb memoir . . . One Ranger is Jackson's own story, a personal tale of adventure, service, love, grief, heartache, and hope. Yet embodied within its pages is the story of every Ranger--the pages of the book are thick with the weight of history. Jackson well knows his place in the continuum of the Texas Rangers, the history of Texas, and the epic of what is today the American Southwest.

America's 1st Freedom

Former Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson is a true living legend, the modern embodiment of the honest Texas lawman. By the time he retired in the 1990s, this craggy-faced gunman had corralled enough bad men and collected enough stories to fuel half a dozen ordinary memoirs. In One Ranger, he recounts his 27-year career, a stint that includes tangles with horse thieves, prison rioters, and marauding teenage murderers. As a breather from these Lone Star adventures, he took a brief sabbatical to Afghanistan, where he trained mujahedin warriors to repel Russian invaders.