Twitter was still years away, but the document in my hand was basically a series of tweets, all lined up in three rows on both sides of a sheet of canary-yellow typing paper. Across the top was the title: The Black and Blue Pilot. The author was anonymous.
My journalism professor handed me the document, which he had received through our college’s inter-office mail. He also gave me the envelope in which it arrived.
My assignment was to identify and interview the author of the document, which some people were calling an underground newspaper. It was nothing of the sort. It contained no news, just a dozen or so unrelated one-or-two sentence statements, often insulting someone or something on our picturesque little college campus. I took the assignment happily. An interview with this controversial person would surely make a good read. Plus, I love a good mystery.
I examined the document carefully, looking for clues. There were several misspellings. Conclusion: the author is male. Next, I turned to the content. One statement accused certain professors of exhibiting the “old fashioned work ethic” to destroy their students’ idealism, while another statement labeled the campus safety officers “fascists.” Conclusion: the author is politically left-leaning. I also felt he was probably shy or quiet – someone more comfortable expressing himself on paper than verbally.
Next, I deduced the approximate location of the author’s dorm room thanks to his complaint about someone riding a “noisy minibike” on campus. “Don’t you have any consideration for others?” he asked rhetorically. I quickly learned there was just one minibike at our school and it could usually be found on the east side of campus, giving me a general idea of where the author probably lived. Finally, I deduced the author to be a current or recent student of English professor Dr. Colin Campbell, whom the author singled out for his “love and kindness.”
So, I decided I was looking for a quiet, left-wing male, living on the east side of campus and a student of Dr. Campbell’s. At a school of only about 650 souls – half of whom were female – this narrowed the field considerably.
With the help of a friend, I obtained a list of Dr. Campbell’s students and, immediately, one name jumped out at me: Tom Moody. I knew him to be quiet, suspected he was left-leaning, and he lived on the minibike-side of campus.
Fortunately, the Black and Blue Pilot was produced with a typewriter. I say fortunately because, thanks to reading Sherlock Holmes, I knew a typewriter’s type, carefully examined, can be as unique as a person’s fingerprint. So, my next step was to learn whether Tom owned a typewriter and, if so, determine whether its type matched the type on the <em>Black and Blue Pilot</em>. I decided it was time to pay Tom (or his dorm room) a visit.
After entering the old, gothic dormitory building Tom called home, I silently made my way to the second floor where his room was located on a corner overlooking a campus roadway. It was midday and the stately old stone building was as quiet as a tomb. A gentle echo reverberated as I knocked lightly on Tom’s door. Listening intently, I heard nothing. Apparently, Tom was not in. My story deadline was fast approaching, so I thought I’d take a peek inside and see if there were any typewriters lying about. It was customary for students at our school to leave their doors unlocked, so this would be no problem. Casting ethical concerns to the breeze, I took a deep breath and reached for the door knob.
Just then I jumped about a foot straight up as the door suddenly swung open revealing Tom in a fuzzy blue bathrobe standing just inches away. When I’d landed again, he expressed some surprise at my visit and asked to what he owed this pleasure. Coming back to my senses, I could think of nothing better than telling the truth, so I told Tom all the evidence pointed to him as the author of the Black and Blue Pilot and I wanted to interview him for an article.
Unsurprisingly, Tom met my statement with a stout denial, delivered with the attitude of a kindly adult talking to an especially slow-witted child. Even when I promised not to reveal his name, he wouldn’t change his tune. I walked away disappointed as Tom closed his door, wishing me a good afternoon.
That evening I wrote my story, with no mention of Tom, of course. I submitted it to the official school newspaper, known as the Pilot, but the editor refused to publish it. He believed a gang of people he called “terrorists” were behind the Black and Blue Pilot and didn’t want to give them any publicity.
About a year later, I found myself living in a big eastern city where serious crime was common and the underground newspaper caper seemed very distant indeed. One Saturday, I attended the wedding of an old college acquaintance and, at the reception, a familiar figure strode up to me smiling and holding a cup of punch in one hand and a plate of wedding cake in the other. It was Tom.
“I was sorry I couldn’t tell you at the time,” Tom said after confessing that he was, indeed, the author of the Black and Blue Pilot. “I thought they might not let me graduate if I did.”
Feeling a little resentment but thanking Tom for his untimely confession, I stabbed a moody piece of wedding cake with a plastic fork as I watched him walk away. Later, I would go on to write for a real newspaper and cover many interesting stories, including murders, political scandals and business corruption. But, to this day, the most enjoyable story I ever covered was the adventure of the Black and Blue Pilot.