As I crossed the city limit, I entered a world of images and expectations, none of which I chose and few of which I then understood. I was expected to fill a role established by predecessors whom I had never met. But I knew they were important. People talked about them and quoted them. Some had near-mythic reputations. One, they had tried to forget. I lived in the shadow of them all and was expected to live up to to the best of them, avoiding the ways of the one that nobody wanted to remember.