Words & Music: Stan Kelly
© 1962 Heathside Music
Automatically
I once had a sweetheart, her name it was Pru
And she used to send me some sweet billets-doux.
They were so neatly typed and they started 'Dear Stan'
And I fondly thought I was her only man.
Chorus:
Oh I wanna take the stop code from your love letter tape
Babe, I wanna be a constant to you.
Now Jim was my best friend, we'd fought side by side,
I showed him your letter, 'twas just out of pride,
Then he takes out a letter, compares with to mine,
Identical love-words on each single line.
(Chorus)
Jim and I fell a-weeping, then I forced a smile,
To think we were just two edge-cards in your file,
But jim kept on sobbing in a terrible shape:
I'm the daft one who thought her to use paper tape.
(Chorus)
I keep calling to see if she loves me or not,
But her heart is as cold as a big mailing-shot,
She'll hug me and kiss me but still I feel bad,
She's got thirty more boy-friends looped round in the STRAD.
(Chorus)
So come all you fellows, you know what I mean,
Take care if your girl has a writing machine,
Make sure when she writes you she uses a pen,
Or you'll end up a-singing this haunting refrain.
(Chorus)
(Repeat Chorus...fade)
Notes
(I have retained the commentary I wrote in 1962. The
Flexowriter, of course, predated our PC word processors by
twenty years.
Automatic typewriters operated by paper-tape or edge-punched
cards are common in the United States and are becoming more
common in Europe than they were. Letters produced by these
machines (Flexo-written, that is) are indistinguishable from
manually typed letters. It is possible to "personalise" by
programming the machine for a stop-code and adding, when the
machine stops, name, address, salutation, and other variables.
If you are regularly writing to the same group of people, you can set
up the variables once and for all in an auxiliary device - the Selecta-
data Tape Reader with Automatic search and Data-select unit,
known briefly as STRAD. The machine that Pru used to keep her
sixty-odd boy-friends "taped" is one that was developed,
ironically, during the second war to "mechanise" the
business of sending letters of condolence to the next-of-kin of
members of the US armed forces, who had been killed on active
service.
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