When I was first handed the book, "Breakfast at Sally's," I was afraid it was going to be about panhandling. Because of my own experiences with panhandlers when I sold "Real Change" eons ago and because of my own aversion about asking people for things, it wasn't a topic that appealed to me. But in fact, author Richard LeMieux writes the most accurate and complete view of the homeless -- and the experience of being homeless -- that I've read.
What made "Breakfast" an uncomfortable read at times was the similarity between the author and myself: We were both successful sports writers back East, estranged from our families, prone to depression and suicidal thoughts we both and wound up sleeping in our cars. Unlike LeMieux however, I was never a fundraiser for the Republican Party. It's a book I (almost) could have written myself and like LeMieux, I would have eschewed the dark introspection.
The book is "one homeless man's inspirational journey," and mostly takes place over one calendar year from December 2002 to 2003. Its title comes from the Salvation Army soup kitchen in Bremerton, Wash. The first time LeMieux went to Sally's for breakfast was the day after Christmas and the following day, he attempted suicide. He was planning to jump off a bridge when he heard his dog barking in the van. LeMieux's concern over Willow, a 10-pound Bichon Frise poodle, overrode his plans to do away with himself.
There were 120 people at Sally's on his inaugural visit. He would get to know many of them: good people, bad people; people who drank and used drugs too much; people who had debilitating problems; the educated and uneducated; people who beat their spouses or had been abandoned by their country after serving in war. Many were a combination of the above. Many who ate at Sally's weren't homeless but couldn't afford anything else. And then there was C.
"The first time I saw C was at Sally's," writes LeMieux. "He looked like he'd just stepped off a 17th century pirate ship. He wore a navy blue wool coat and 13-button wool pants. His head was covered with an expertly folded purple bandana, and he wore a purple sash around his waist. An old duffel bag was thrown over his shoulder, and he was dripping wet from the rain that often falls on this Northwest city."
LeMieux discovers that C was a voracious reader who quoted John Steinbeck (who he called the last great American novelist) and Joseph Campbell's "Power Of Myth." He used words like transcendence, consciousness, bliss and rapture in regular conversation. He lived out of a van called the Armadillo and smoked (and may have sold) large quantities of marijuana. C became LeMieux and Willow's traveling companion for the next year. C took LeMieux dumpster diving, camping into the woods where a group of homeless youth were staying and to C's storage unit where a woman was secretly living with her two small children. She cooked them a spaghetti dinner. They also went to the Seattle Opera and a Chinese restaurant where C talked Chinese to the waitress. C knew everyone and had helped everyone.
This is truly a book that could be made into a movie. LeMieux's discussion with Vietnam vets is bone chilling: A woman does jump off a bridge right after talking to LeMieux at the soup kitchen. LeMieux and C visit Andy, who had just moved inside after years on the street. Andy was able to get some nice digs because Social Security owed him $76,000 in back payments. As C, Richard and Andy watch television, Andy keels over from a fatal heart attack as the Jeopardy theme music comes on. "C was like a physician at the bedside of an old friend. 'It's okay Richard," he said, seeing my distress." And along with the memory, LeMieux's deceased friend left something else: "over sixty-three thousand dollars behind in the bank -- the remainder of the money he had waited for and needed all those years on the street."
There's even a softball game that, with the score tied 11-11, could stand in as the film's climax. Here, LeMieux reverts back to his sports-writing days. "Mary [a young girl] had struck out seven consecutive times but the bat caught a portion of the ball, sending it gyrating wildly towards the only spot on the field where a hit was possible, considering the cast of characters on the field." A man named Grady, playing third base with a cane, has to toss the stick aside, hobble to the ball and then throws home late as a 320-pound female crossed the plate with the winning run.
There's good storytelling in the book and some nice juxtapositions the author makes between his current life and memories from the past. But the sequences near the end of the book, where he starts seeing and talking to dead people, seem too unrealistic. Re-reading the introduction, I was a little disappointed when LeMieux says that 98 percent of his story is true. I understand moving events around to give the story more of a flow -- and LeMieux says none of the characters are made up -- but I always wonder what 2 percent isn't true.
At the end of a year, he and Willow are living in a church basement. LeMieux is making progress at the mental health clinic (one of the biggest mysteries of the book is why he never received state assistance for the physically/mentally incapacitated or unemployable, known as GAU) and C has moved on to parts unknown. By the story's end, LeMieux has even started to hear from his family again. "Breakfast" is a book that I'd highly recommend, but I'm jealous I didn't write it myself.