RIVER CITY JOURNAL: HOLE-IN-ONE, OTHER NEWS SET POT SIMMERING

Let's call this a cleanup column. It's sort of like refrigerator soup -- you know, where you put all the leftovers into a pot and let everything simmer for two or three hours.

First, some really big news:

As some of you who have golfed with me already know, my skills with golf clubs leave a lot to be desired. I played fairly regularly several years ago, and then I gave up golf for more than 10 years due to lack of time and general frustration with the game.

I took it up again about this time last year after a company outing that whetted my appetite. I did what I should have done all those years ago: I found a competent instructor and took weekly lessons for most of last summer. I can't say that my game improved much -- until last weekend.

A friend arranged a golf marathon of a round at one course in the morning and another round at another course in the afternoon. As it turns out, I was playing really well by the last nine holes. As a matter of fact, I told several golfers here at the office that I might never play again for fear of losing the euphoria that comes with playing well.

I was still basking in the glow when my phone rang Wednesday afternoon. It was our younger son, the one in Utah, who never held a golf club in his hand until late last summer. He came home for a visit and announced that he needed to learn how to golf, because his co-workers were all golfers, and he was expected to participate. (Does it matter that he lives across the street from the golf course?)

So, I did a fatherly thing. I bought him an inexpensive set of clubs and some shoes. We went to the driving range where Brendan demonstrated an innate ability to strike the ball and hit is straight. So we went to the golf course and played a round. Brendan did OK for a first-timer. But he didn't really show all that much enthusiasm.

The call Wednesday, I could tell, was tinged with excitement. Our young, half-enthusiastic golfer had big news. Big news indeed.

He was on the seventh hole, a par 3. His tee shot went wild. So he hit a mulligan. (I'm not going to explain all of this for non-golfers, because by now their eyes are glazed over anyway.)

While Brendan and his friends watched, the ball faded toward the green, landed a few yards short and then took two good bounces, where it rolled onto the green and -- you guessed it -- into the cup.

Some purists will say a hole-in-one on a mulligan doesn't count. Try telling that to any duffer who is so incredibly lucky. I'd say it was more than luck. I'd say it was because of that day spent on the driving range and at the golf course learning from Pop. I'd say Brendan is just a chipshot off the old block.

Now some other stuff:

At a family get-together this week, the conversation turned to a trip my stepbrother and his wife and son made to Alaska a few years ago where they panned for gold.

For some reason, I was suddenly reminded that I own land in Alaska.

There must be thousands of us Alaskan landowners who have all but forgotten our investment made in the 1950s as the result of an enticing prospectus printed on the back of a Kellogg's cereal box -- corn flakes, I think.

Remember? You could buy a square inch of land in Alaskan gold country for -- what was it? A quarter? Fifty cents? Two box tops?

No, I haven't paid the taxes, and I have no idea where my square inch is. But I'm curious. Does anyone know how to find out if a mall developer is trying to buy my land?

And some more stuff:

A cousin of my wife's has a husband who had developed pain in his legs so severe that he is barely able to walk. His doctor sent him to a surgeon who said the pain was caused by a pinched nerve in his lower spine. The surgeon recommended a lumbar lamenectomy.

Since he had never heard of this procedure, my wife's cousin's husband started looking for information. He called to see if I could get some information off the Internet. I did, and I sent it to him. But what he really wanted was to find someone he could trust who had had the operation and could talk to him about it.

During my stepbrother's visit this week, I asked how his back surgery a couple of months ago had gone. It occurred to me that he might have had a lumbar lamenectomy. Yes, he said, that's what it was. Pains shooting down his leg to his kneecap. Two months after the surgery, the pain is all gone, and he feels great.

Would he mind talking to my wife's cousin's husband? Not at all.

So the two of them chatted for several minutes over the telephone. Imagine finding someone for my wife's cousin's husband to talk to as the result of a visitng stepbrother from Michigan. Small world, huh?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.