That there were hit song written about communication satlelites...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGhxayGDa5Q&feature=relatedI was only four years old when the song came out but I remember it well. We had a foster girl in the house at the time, my mom needed some help when she had my little sister and the girl was from a very troubled home. My mom looked at charity as a win win situation.
What ever the case, Sharon came into our home from a place called Parmadale, a home for children, the fallout from disintegrating families. I remember her father looked old, sort of like Boris Karloff. He made an impression on me when he gave me a little hard candy when we took Sharon to gather some of her things that Parmadale didn't have room for.
Anyway, my dad was really into being a Pollock, like Stanly from Streetcar Named Desire. He wore tight T-shirts and drank a lot. He couldn't have been more than 31 or so and I think this was also his long sunburn era. He looked like a beat poet but acted like a drunken longshoreman. Well, I guess that means he looked and acted like a beat poet.
Well, Sharon and my dad didn't hit it off. Sharon was a big girl, almost as tall as my dad and she was strong. I remember that she could pick up my brother and me with one arm. We were 4 and 6 but that still is a load for a teenage girl.
They got into it one day and she took a swing at my dad, a roundhouse and he ducked but slipped and fell on the mosaic tile in the front hall. She ran up the stairs, grabbed me and took me into her room, locked the door and hugged me hard. She was crying because she knew this was going to send her back to Parmadale, back to that soulless place where Juvenile Delinquents were hatched. The only record she had in her room was Telstar. It played through and then returned back and played again.
She just held me and rocked back and forth, crying. My dad was banging on the door and my mom was yelling at him for being such a jerk but the damage was done. He walked away from the door after Telstar had played about four or five times. Sharon kept on crying but now it was more bitter than sad.
When my mom finally convinced her to open up the door, Sharon carried me over to the door with her. My mom looked at her and just said "Oh Sharon..."
I went with my mom the next day when we took Sharon back to Parmadale.
A few years later we learned that her father had raped her and that she had had a child before she came to us. She was broken, shattered really and we couldn't do anything about it.
I'll always remember how grateful she was to be with us even though it was only a short while.
I'll always remember how she held me so tight, maybe imagining what it would have been like to have a toddler to love, to hold close when the world comes pressing in. Maybe she cried so hard that day not for herself but for the baby they took away.
Anyway, that is why I remember the song Telstar and the early Kennedy years when there was hope for everyone except girls like Sharon.
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