Now if you frequent Weaver D's Delicious Fine Foods you'll know I'm automatic. Everything about me is automatic. When you walk through the front door, you know you'll get some good food like you're supposed to, food that's automatic for the people. After every one of my customers places an order, I get the money in hand and say, "Thank you. Automatic." And I mean every word. You hire Weaver D's to cater your wedding, your CD release party, your fraternity homecoming, and you know Weaver will be there in white top and black bottom with the good food, automatic. If you need a smile or have a problem that we can work out, that's automatic too.
Now some kind of way, that appealed to R.E.M. I suppose because they've always been automatic too. Whenever they put out an album it goes to the top of the charts, automatic. And they have been so good for Athens, supporting the community and the charities, for the people. Also I've seen those R.E.M. boys all over town with their mamas and daddies and grandmamas. They all seem so good to their families, automatic for their people.
So I guess that my slogan appealed to them and they asked me one time could they use my little "Automatic for the People" saying for one of their albums. "Well, sure you can. Being automatic for the people has brought me nothing but success, happiness, and good feelings, and I hope it does the same for you." So that album was released and, you know it did, it went to the top of the charts automatic. It was so good for our hometown boys. R.E.M. toured the world and the world toured me. All the folks from Germany, England, Norway, Sweden, Australia and every which where wanted to come to Athens to see all the R.E.M. sites like the 40 Watt Club where they played their first gig and the first stop on those sightseers' trips had to be Weaver D's. They came piled up in campers and tour buses, with video cameras and little kids.
. . .
Now all that is how R.E.M. came to be knowing me and how they got automatic. But what I want to tell you is how Weaver D got automatic his own self. There is a lot of hard work involved and what I haven't been able to do for myself or my family couldn't help with, the Lord has provided.
When little Weaver was shining shoes for thirty-five cents on the street corner in Baltimore, if someone had told me that one day I would be sitting at the Grammy Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, a guest of one of the top bands in the whole worldwide, with my own restaurant waiting on me back home, would I have been surprised? This little Weaver, going to Wardleave Junior High School on the north side of Baltimore, eating those government cheese sandwiches? No, no it wouldn't have surprised me at all. Maybe the particulars, maybe the details. But this little Weaver has always been on his way and as long as I walked in a straight line I knew I was going forward.