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Video Friday

Jan10

Uncle Cracker covered this song, but I have always felt that the Dobie Gray original is far superior. While it doesn’t have anything directly to do with Satellite of Love, it is responsible in a way for the entire series because this is how I have always felt about music. I don’t want Calgon to take me away because music does the job so much better.

Interestingly, legend has it that the song was offered to Elvis, but when he hear the Dobie Gray recording he turned it down because he didn’t think he could do a better version. Elvis, people.

The Origin Of the Title

Jan7

“Satellite of Love” is the title of a song by Lou Reed. I had wanted Bear to be a hobby mechanic who collected muscle cars and I wanted him to be working on one. I thought about having him collect Mustangs or something more common, but it seemed to me that Bear would want something a little more challenging and unusual so the Plymouth Satellite was recommended to me as a not too common muscle car. So I researched it and settled on the 1972 model because I felt it had the coolest front end. What do you know, the song was released in 1972. Kismet!

I happen to also be a huge fan of the show Adam 12. Turns out that during the third season the patrol car was a 1971 Plymouth Satellite. So close.

That arrangement of words as they related to the story also had a certain snotty humor that I so enjoy. With all that going for it what could I do, but name the book “Satellite Of Love”?

The Satellite’s Battery

Dec31

Excerpt:

“The Satellite is still in my garage,” she said when he allowed her to speak.

“The car?”

“Yes, silly. You said you wanted to store it at my house. I’ve been going out and starting it up every couple of days so the battery doesn’t die.” To be honest, she went out to sit in the car to remind herself that she wasn’t crazy. He did exist and she hadn’t made him up. For some reason, the telephone conversations weren’t as reassuring as sitting in his car, parked in her garage, listening to the engine purr.

When I was five months old my father had a heart attack while shoveling snow two days before Christmas. As my brother tells it, he (my brother) was watching the Peanuts Christmas Special in the living room when the sound of the shovel stopped so he looked outside. Dad was in a heap on the sidewalk.

This was the 70’s so Dad was in the hospital for weeks. My mom was stuck at house with two small children and an infant wondering if her husband was coming home. It’s kind of a family joke that she started the car every day to keep the battery from dying and it died anyway because she didn’t realize she had to drive it around. (And really, would you leave your 5-month-old alone with your 9-year-old and your 7-year-old to even drive around the block when your husband was in the hospital?)

Until I wrote this scene I hadn’t thought too deeply about how my mom must have felt sitting in that car listening to the engine run. My parents were both going to college around jobs and family at a university about half an hour away. Mom has always said that she only went to college because it was the only way she ever got to see my father between his full time job at the steel mill and school so most of their conversations early in their marriage took place to the soundtrack of the car engine and the radio. During those very dark days, the sound of the engine must have been a great comfort to her. I can only hope it comforted her as much as the purr of the Satellite comforted Maureen.