Breakfast at Sally's Read online

  Breakfast At Sally's

  One Homeless Man's Inspirational Journey

  Richard LeMieux

  Copyright © 2008 by Richard LeMieux

  Illustrations © 2008 by Michael Gordon

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 555 Eighth Avenue, Suite 903, New York, NY 10018.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 555 Eighth Avenue, Suite 903, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  www.skyhorsepublishing.com

  Note: Some characters’ names and other identifying information have been changed to protect their anonymity, and some scenes have been compressed for narrative purposes.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  LeMieux, Richard.

  Breakfast at Sally’s : one homeless man’s inspirational journey /

  Richard LeMieux.

  p. cm.

  9781602392939

  1. LeMieux, Richard. 2. Homeless men—Washington (State)—Bremerton—Biography. 3. Homeless persons—Washington (State)—Bremerton—Biography. 4. Bremerton (Wash.)—Biography. I. Title.

  HV4506.B74L46 2008

  305.5’69092--dc22

  [B]

  2008024420

  Printed in the United States of America

  To “C”

  Peace. Be safe,

  wherever you may be.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION

  Chapter 1 - SALLY’S

  Chapter 2 - A DAY WITH C, CAMPBELL, STEINBECK, AND TWAIN

  Chapter 3 - THE LADY IN RED

  Chapter 4 - MR. C’S NEIGHBORHOOD

  Chapter 5 - GOING LOOKING FOR ANGELS

  Chapter 6 - THE FOOD ANGELS

  Chapter 7 - SANCTUARY AT THE HOSPITAL

  Chapter 8 - DR. Z

  Chapter 9 - OH, GOD!

  Chapter 10 - OFF TO THE MENTAL INSTITUTION

  Chapter 11 - ANDY, THE BEAUTIFUL WEED

  Chapter 12 - ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

  Chapter 13 - I GET SAVED

  Chapter 14 - ANGEL OF PREY

  Chapter 15 - DAVID’S SONG

  Chapter 16 - VINNY

  Chapter 17 - DUMPSTER DIVING

  Chapter 18 - VINNY DIES

  Chapter 19 - THE OPERA

  Chapter 20 - THE LUCKY ROCKS

  Chapter 21 - THE HILTON

  Chapter 22 - ANDY GETS LUCKY

  Chapter 23 - THE REAL FIELD OF DREAMS

  Chapter 24 - HOW MUCH FOR THAT DOGGIE?

  Chapter 25 - CAMPING

  Chapter 26 - A ROOM WITH A VIEW

  Chapter 27 - S’GHETTI

  Chapter 28 - BANK OF AMERICA

  Chapter 29 - HERO LOST

  Chapter 30 - THE CHURCH MICE

  Chapter 31 - JUST ANOTHER HEADLINE

  Chapter 32 - THE HOLY GHOSTS

  Chapter 33 - SO MUCH TO WRITE

  EPILOGUE - July 20, 2005 BE SELFISH: VOLUNTEER!

  IN APPRECIATION

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  INTRODUCTION

  “What you doin’?” A voice from behind startled me, and I turned from my seat on the picnic bench. “Looks like you’re writin’ somethin’.” A tall, bearded man—maybe thirty, with a round, tan golf cap pulled down over his bushy hair—leaned forward, his hands clasped behind his back, to sneak a peek at the words I had typed on my Underwood Travelwriter typewriter.

  “Oh, I’m writing a book,” I said. “Just starting, really.”

  “What’s it about?” he asked.

  “Well, I’m not really sure.” I scratched my head. “Homeless people, I think. People I’ve met—interesting people. People living, laughing, crying, struggling—people dying.”

  “You can’t beat a good book about people,” the man said. “Ever write a book before?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said.

  “I’m Michael,” he said, extending a hand stained with automotive grease.

  “My name is Richard.” I reached out my hand in return. Michael gripped it firmly and shook it as if he were pumping water from a well.

  “Always wanted to write a book myself,” he said. “Maybe about cars. But it takes a lot of talent and time to write a good book, you know? Not everybody can do it.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Well, what do you know?” he finally said. “I was just going for a walk in the park, and I met a man who is going to be a famous author. How about that? Would you give me an autographed copy when you’re done?” he asked.

  “Sure!” I smiled.

  “Well, good luck, man,” he said, and walked down a small path until he disappeared into the bushes.

  I turned and began writing again. I was on page three.

  It was the spring of 2003. I had been homeless for nine months now and living in the back of my van with my little white dog, Willow. I had begged enough money for a four-day stay in the state park campground and gotten a box of food from the local food bank—dried milk, pork and beans, a loaf of white bread, a jar of grape jelly, a box of graham crackers, and a big tub of peanut butter.

  I’d had the idea to write a book about the homeless people I’d met, and a kind man at a secondhand store gave me this small typewriter and some paper—free of charge—when I told him my dream. “Nobody wants these old things anymore anyway,” he had said, pulling the red five-dollar sticker off the 12-by-15-inch Travelwriter as he handed it to me. It needed some care. Every time I punched the R key, it would stick to the C key, and the J would always stick to the U.

  I wrote for four straight days at that picnic table, stopping only to make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner and walk my dog in the surrounding forest. Michael would walk past my campsite each day about noon. “How’s it goin’?” he would call out, and I would respond with a “Pretty good” and a wave. I went to sleep every night thinking about what I was going to write in the morning.

  But then on Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of rain pelting down on the van. I had taken the thirty pages I had written inside the night before, but I realized I had left the Travelwriter out on the table, and it was soaked. Just as well, I thought. I’m not going to write a book anyway. So on the way out of the campground I tossed the typewriter and those first pages into a big green dumpster.

  I spent most of Saturday looking for work, unskilled labor of any sort—as a grocery store bag boy, anything that would earn me gas money. When that failed, because I had no address or phone number to provide on a job application, I went panhandling. I slept that night in the Denny’s parking lot just off the freeway, listening to the “jake” brakes of the big trucks as I tried to sleep.

  On Sunday I went to a free meal for the poor. It was served in the basement of a church, packed with people. I found a seat in the back. As I was lifting a spoonful of meatball soup to my mouth, I felt a tap on my right shoulder. When I turned, nobody was there. Then there was a tap on my left shoulder. I turned again and spotted someone attempting to duck out of sight.

  “Oh, it’s you, Michael—from the campground.” I smiled at him.

  “How’s the book coming?” he asked.

  “A little slow today,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve got something for you in my truck,” he said,
raising his hand and signaling for me to follow him.

  I stood up and followed Michael out the door to his battered blue pickup truck.

  Once he got the door open, he reached in and took out a cardboard box and handed it to me. “It’s a typewriter,” he said. “It looks a lot like the one you have, but it might be a better one. I found it in a dumpster. A couple of keys were sticking, but I fixed them and I oiled it up good,” he added, pointing at the box with grease-stained fingers. “Now you have two typewriters—in case one of them breaks.” He beamed at me. “I found some paper in the dumpster and tossed it in there, too.”

  When I looked inside the box, I found the same old Travelwriter I had thrown away, along with the thirty discarded pages. I closed the lid and simply said, “Thanks, Michael.”

  “We have to take care of each other when we can,” he said. Then he turned and walked away.

  It was then that I knew I must write this book.

  So, write I did—whenever and wherever I could.

  Over the days, weeks, and months of writing at picnic tables, I attracted more and more attention from homeless people asking “What’re you writing?” “A book about the homeless?” “Am I in it?” Through the homeless grapevine, word spread about my book. It became a topic at the breakfast and lunch tables at the Salvation Army and at church dinner tables at night. I soon gained a fan club of poor and homeless people rooting for me. I felt so honored.

  Now I had to keep writing.

  I kept writing on that old portable typewriter. I wrote at picnic tables in front of the YMCA, in city parks, in the Salvation Army soup kitchen, and in the kitchen of Bremerton First United Methodist Church, where I was allowed to live for nine months.

  I finished the book while living in an apartment the people of the church had graciously helped me move into, cosigning the lease and providing financial support.

  On days of deep depression, including the final weeks of writing, I came within inches of throwing the manuscript in the dumpster over and over again, feeling that I was worthless and the book was worthless as well.

  On some of those days, I would drag myself over to sit with my editor and friend, Sandy Rice. She never failed to encourage me as she painstakingly walked this literary journey with me, helping me make sense of my experience and of myself.

  So, the book survived, and now you have it in your hands.

  About 98 percent of the events and stories are true. It’s “98 proof,” as some of my street associates might say. Some names have been changed to “protect the innocent.” The time frame of some events has been changed or adapted to make the story more accessible.

  But the people are as real as you can find anywhere. I hope you enjoy meeting them.

  Chapter 1

  SALLY’S

  The first time I saw C was at Sally’s.

  That’s what the homeless affectionately call the Salvation Army soup kitchen. It’s near the corner of 6th Avenue and Warren Street in Bremerton, Washington.

  C looked like he’d just stepped off a seventeenth-century pirate ship as he strode into Sally’s and got into the serving line. He wore a navy blue wool coat and thirteen-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.

  It was late December—the 26th, actually, the day after Christmas. At 34 degrees, it was just warm enough to keep the rain from changing into snow and just cold enough to chill you to the bone.

  C took a serving tray, and the lady behind the counter scooped up a big helping of white rice, a serving of carrots, and a piece of meat, and she then placed two chocolate-covered donuts on his tray. He grabbed a cup of coffee and swaggered to our table. It had the only free seat remaining at Sally’s, as 120 or more men, women, and children broke bread together and gave thanks for what was going to be the only meal of the day for many of them.

  “Fashionably late again, I see,” one of the men said, greeting C.

  “Well, if it isn’t Gentleman Jake,” C responded, placing his tray down on the well-worn round table and settling in on one of the aluminum folding chairs.

  C leaned forward, putting his face just inches from his tray of food. “Ahh. It’s ‘mystery meat’ again,” he said. “No one seems to know what it is, not even the cook. It’s shaped like a pork chop, but it says chicken on the box, and it’s tasteless,” C added, as he stroked his full red beard. “Hmmm...”

  “Just eat it,” Gentleman Jake interrupted. “It fills the stomach.”

  C pulled a switchblade from his pocket, popped it open, and began cutting up his portion of mystery meat. “It takes a sharp blade to cut this stuff,” he said.

  C’s eyes scanned the table as he ate. “I see we have a new face in the crowd,” he said, looking at me. He stood up and extended his hand across the table. “I’m C,” he said. “Just C.”

  “I’m Richard. Glad to meet you,” I said.

  “I apologize,” Jake said, wiping his hand on a napkin and extending it toward me. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Jake. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Richard.”

  “Likewise,” I replied.

  “Leave it to C to remind us of proper etiquette,” Jake said. “Let me introduce Don, Dave, Stephen, and Lenny,” Jake continued, pointing out the other men at the table. Three of the four men nodded in response. The fourth just kept eating, his head down.

  “Please pass the butter, sir,” Lenny asked.

  “Jake knows everybody,” C said.

  “I should by now. I’ve been coming here for six years. I’m one of Sally’s best customers.”

  I expected the usual battery of questions to follow: “Where’re you from?” “Why’re you here?” “What’s your sad story?” But they didn’t ask.

  As the men chewed on their mystery meat, a moment of silence fell over the table. Jake broke it. “Richard, right?” he asked. I nodded. “Well, you should have been here yesterday for lunch. Right, C?”

  “Damn straight,” C said. “We had the full-monty Christmas dinner by Chef Patricia. Turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and all the trimmings.”

  “All you could eat, too,” Jake jumped in, while downing a sip of java.

  “KING 5 News from Seattle was even here doing a piece on the homeless,” said C.

  “It was hilarious,” Jake said. “You had to be here. The Major announced that the TV crew was going to turn on the cameras. He said, ‘Any of you who don’t want to be on TV tonight, or have outstanding warrants for your arrest, might want to move to the other side of the room.’ And about forty guys ran for cover!”

  “Seconds!” Chef Pat yelled, interrupting our laughter. The hungriest—probably half of the folks in the room—grabbed their trays and scurried to get in line again. “Just meat and rice. We’re out of carrots,” she bellowed.

  “You better get up there if you want more. They’ll run out today for sure,” C said.

  I walked to the end of the line for my second helping of Sally’s offerings. I was hungry. I had not eaten much in the past three days. I’d never liked white rice and, yes, the meat was mysterious, but it did fill the stomach, as Gentleman Jake had said. And for that I was grateful.

  I looked around the big dining hall as the line inched forward. I could hear Jake and C discussing the color of the carrots. C said they were an awfully bright orange to be real. Jake said that was because they were special carrots. “They glow!” C chimed, and Jake laughed. “It’s the holidays; what do you expect? Everything glows!”

  The soup kitchen had no windows. The walls were painted mustard yellow, and the floor was dark-brown tile, scuffed and stained. Sally’s was once the phone company utility building. It was earthquake-proof. A heavy, metal-gray door guarded the entrance. Two signs were duct-taped to the door: no Firearms and no dogs tied to the entrance.

  The line moved forward s
lowly. “I hope they don’t run out before we get there,” a man behind me said. “I’m still hungry.”

  The big gray door opened and a man stumbled in, drenched from the rain. He leaned wearily against the wall and took a soiled handkerchief from his back pocket to blow his nose.

  “You’re a little late, Andy,” said the man behind me, greeting the newcomer.

  “I’ve been up by 7-Eleven,” replied Andy, slurring his words.

  “Let’s let Andy go to the front of the line,” the man suggested, and the people all waved him by. “He’s been panhandling up the street,” the man whispered. “And he may have been drinking a bit,” he added, laughing. I nodded.

  Sally’s was like a fortress to many—the only refuge, the last vestige of sanctuary. There were racks of outdated bread lining one wall and two folding tables with boxes of ripe bananas, red peppers, and cucumbers for the taking.

  This would be my first of many visits to “Sally’s Diner” over the next few years.

  I had seen the poor before, of course. I had given to street people many times—a quarter here, a quarter there. As an affluent businessman, I had sent checks to the Salvation Army and the Union Gospel Mission.

  I tried not to judge the poor as others did. But I had seen them late at night as I came home from a play or a movie, moving across the landscape like nomads, searching for the basics of survival: heat, light, water, and a dry place to sleep. I had also watched them stumbling and mumbling, high on their drug of choice. And I found myself judging as well.

  I asked myself the usual questions: “Why don’t they just get a job?” “Why do they waste their lives on booze or cocaine?” “Are they just lazy people who don’t want to work?”

  I was managing thousands of dollars each day at The Source, my publishing company, when it was successful. I used to send money to the poor because it made me feel good—or maybe because I felt I might be able to purchase some good karma for my buck. Besides, I could write it off at tax time.