Growing up in Glasgow the late 1950s, John spent his days kicking the football in the schoolyard with friends. He knew little about the States, other than a puzzle map his mother bought for him. And then life changed in a flash. “I tried to lose my old skin and adopt my new one,” he tells me of his years spent in American elementary schools. “I stood out. And at nine, that is a good and a bad thing. People would always ask me to say something Scottish, so I’d say ‘Och aye the noo’ and that seemed to satisfy...