Same Kind of Different As Me Summary
Same Kind of Different As Me is a memoir by Ron Hall detailing his friendship with a homeless man named Denver Moore. Despite their many differences, Hall and Moore strike up what will become a deep, lifelong friendship.
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Denver Moore was born in Louisiana, where he worked as a sharecropper until he hopped a train and moved to Texas.
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Ron Hall was a modest soup salesman, but he becomes a rich, successful art dealer. His wife, Debbie, becomes deeply involved in charity work, and she introduces him to Moore.
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By the time Debbie dies of cancer, Hall and Moore have become good friends.
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Summary
The book Same Kind of Different as Me, by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, is a memoir that tells the stories of its two authors and central protagonists from their early years to the time they meet, along with their bonding afterward.
Born in 1937, Denver grows up amid hardship and segregation in Red River Parish, Louisiana. At an early age, he begins working as a sharecropper for a rich farmer, who, for all practical purposes, has enslaved Denver. After nearly thirty years of such indentured labor, Denver escapes from it all by taking the freight train out of the city. Illiterate and unemployable, he is left to fend for himself on the streets.
Ron Hall, born in 1950, has a more comfortable upbringing. His lower-middle-class family is able to provide him with an education that sets him up for a career later on. In college, he meets Deborah. She is unlike the other girls Ron has pursued, and the two begin dating. During the Vietnam War, Ron is posted in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as a weapons support administrator.
Ron and Deborah marry after he has served out the draft period. Ron becomes a respectable art dealer after a stint marketing Campbell's Soup and then working as an investment banker. He becomes wealthy, and his work exposes him to the lifestyle of the rich and famous—a lifestyle he aspires to emulate. Deborah’s disinterest in material wealth, however, is in contrast to Ron’s appreciation of the luxuries that money can buy, and the two grow apart.
Ron has an affair with an artist in Beverly Hills, and Deborah forgives him. After seeking help from a marriage counselor, the couple move to Fort Worth, Texas. Denver, meanwhile, has...
(The entire section is 497 words.)