Stand-Off in Texas: "Just Call Me a Spokesman for the Dps

If you like Cox' newspaper columns, this book is worth the read. If you happen to be around 50 years old, as I am, and want to see reduced to the printed page those recollections of events that took place in your lifetime, and that formed a part of your life's experience, it is worth the read. It amazes how one's perception of things may be closely shared by another, but with the colorations of each determined by how close one is to the subject at the time and to how much more of the details one is privy.On analysis, this book makes a good case for the author's own argument often made in his newspaper column that newspapers are good primary sources for historians. I predict that history will prove this book not only a worthy reference for those who today wish to improve their skills in handling relations with the Fourth Estate, but also a worthy primary source for those future historians who will try to distill the essence of Texas life from 1950s to the `90s.A note to collectors. This first edition of the paperback has a typographical on the cover, leaving out the "the" in the book's title, that is otherwise present on the title page. (The dust jacket of the hardcover edition shares this affliction.) This will surely be corrected in the next edition, so it is worth snapping up now a copy of this one. I have suspected for a while that these little blemishes may be by design. I first came across this phenomena of a hidden deflection from the title page planted on the book's cover in Cox' children's book "Texas Rangers: Men of Valor and Courage" (cover: "Men of Courage and Valor"). Like the $.02 U. S. Airmail stamp of years past with the biplane flying upside down, these little peccadillos, over time, add value. As many may not know, Cox and his bride are also notable rare book dealers, so who would be in a better position to appreciate those things that may add to appreciation.

Deep in the bowels of The Library of Congress, or wherever it is that such things get done, there is a book cataloguer in a quandary as to how to classify Mike Cox' new book, "Stand-off in Texas." It is part history, part autobiography and part textbook; but not easily pigeonholed.The reason behind the rating: the short answer is perspective. The long answer is a little more complex. Let me set the stage. I am 50 years old. I have grown up and lived in Texas during those 50 years. I had just finished reading Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full," Larry McMurtry's "Duane's Depressed" and John Grisham's "Testament." (Of the three, by the way, McMurty's is the best written, although to say that I do not intend to disparage the other two.) Each involved a man, later in his life, of some sense of perceived success or achievement within his community, but each with a family or families that did not turn out the way he probably originally expected (but the way, with hindsight, one might say he probably earned). Is it some coincidence that these three hot new books from America's big authors are all about later life disappointments and futility? Then I read "Stand-off in Texas." Although not fiction, as are the previous three, I wondered how could a book that chronicled some of the great tragedies and news events in Texas during my lifetime, provide a sense of relief from the oppressive notions in the fiction that I had just read, which, although fiction, were nevertheless realistic descriptions of the times in which I have lived? The answer is the autobiographical aspect of Mike Cox' life that is a large yet unhighlighted component of his book. In reading it, I was reminded not only of the great news stories of my times, but also of the thoughts and events and fads and feelings and flavor of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, the five decades that the author and I share in common. I was reminded of the sweet blessings of life during those decades, and of the real worth of friends and family. I was rewarded by Mike's wit, sense of humor and elegant-in-its-simplicity writing style. I reveled in his straightforward writing with a liberal sprinkling of the well-turned phrase. I was renewed by the shown serendipities that life seems to have benefacted us all and that can largely be found in each of us. I was reinvigorated by the little things the author notes in the book, which by themselves probably didn't seem like much at the time they occurred, but, when viewed in the collective and in the historic, take on a whole that is greater than the sum of the individual parts. I was replenished by the reflection and retrospection found between the cover and the endsheet, illuminating both the age and the man with eloquent economy. While his topics may be the Branch Davidians and the Republic of Texas, his theme is the American character, as revealed in the daily struggles of doing a job well for the pure sake of doing it we

Other than Mike Cox and his wife Linda, I perhaps know as well as anyone how close this book came to never being written. Mike is my hunting buddy, and as he reveals in the book, he learned he had cancer during a particularly tumultuous time in his career as Public Information Officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety.After his concern for his family, his chief worry during that time was that each hunt we went on might be his last. I'd remind him of the early hours and long days we'd face, and he'd say, "But this might be my last chance to go hunting." So we'd go.Ironically, I probably came closer to killing him than cancer did. We went deer hunting one December when radiation and chemotherapy had him whipped down about as far as he could go and still hold on. By the time the sun came up that morning, Mike had killed one deer, and I had killed three. We spent the rest of the day skinning, cutting up, and packaging those deer. I gave Mike the easiest jobs, but we were both seriously exhausted by the time the day was over. Yet he never complained. We had a good hunt.It's that kind of spirit in the face of grinding obstacles that permeates Mike's book, "Stand Off in Texas." While one gets a sense of the tremendous pressure he was under at Killeen, Waco, and Fort Davis, he never once tries to make you feel sorry for him. It's obvious he did not feel sorry for himself. There was a job to be done--a hard, nasty, thankless job--but it was his job, and he did it, without complaint."Stand Off in Texas" tells Mike's story in the self-effacing way you'd expect of a man who is the spokesperson for the law enforcement department that includes the Texas Rangers, officers whose mottoes include "No man in the wrong can stand up against a man in the right who keeps on comin'."Mike Cox keeps on comin' in the best tradition of the Rangers. We're going hunting again come December.