YOU ARE WHAT THEY MADE YOU

By Jim MacNeill

Pirate or preacher, sinner or sinless, noble or nuts, they all had one thing in common. They were survivors. If somehow the cord of life had been cut, we wouldn’t be here today. Life has always been a treacherous, dangerous business, but some made it further down the road than others. If even one person in our family line had died early, we’d not have existed. Our genes demand immortality which comes from being passed from one generation to the next. In that way our ancestors live within each of us. Every waking moment they inform us as to who and what we are.

On either side of Richard Nixon during his first inauguration as President of the United States stood Lyndon Johnson and Billy Graham. These three men were the descendants of the Anglo-Scottish border reivers — raiders and thieves and the best light cavalry known in Europe for three centuries. The reivers were eventually exiled or hanged at the beginning of the 1600s by King James I. Looking at the three in retrospect it is not hard to imagine Lyndon, Billy, and Dick — Johnson, Graham, Nixon — in breastplate and helmet. They physically resemble their robbing, raiding ancestors.

"Jim's Snapshot" is updated each Monday with a fresh, provocative and stimulating insight from local writer and visionary, Jim MacNeill.