TEACHER SAVES BEST LESSONS FOR `MR. TRELLER'

Like a lot of us, Steve Mosley was excited when he got his personal letter, signed by Robert H. Treller, notifying him that he was one of the "finalists" in the Publishers Clearing House $10 million sweepstakes.

Mosley, 51, teaches social studies in a high school in Sikeston, Mo. Needless to say, high school social studies teachers generally are not high rollers, so the thought that he might "win a life-changing prize!" had a certain appeal.

"I notified the media that I would be available for interviews," Mosley said. "My family and I are going to dress up and try to appear telegenic."

Imagine Mosley's disappointment when he realized that more than a few other families had received the identical letter, signed "Best of luck to a friend and contender, Robert H. Treller."

Who was this guy Treller, and why was he getting peoples' hopes up? Mosley, tongue firmly in cheek, was determined to get to the bottom of it. He began to write letters of his own. Some he sent to Publishers Clearing House. Some he sent to the sponsors of other sweepstakes contests that arrived in his junk mail, asking them if they knew Treller. He sent carbons of every letter to Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon.

Many letters later, Mosley got a reply from Publishers Clearing House, signed by Robert H. Treller.

"We are pleased to provide you with the information you requested," Treller's letter began. "Our records show you have concern over our association with 'Robert Treller.' Please be advised this is a name only to represent our customer service department ... We apologize for any confusion. (This letter automatically will be signed by Robert H. Treller.)"

The letter went on to clarify what Mosley had already suspected, that the word "finalist" was not to be taken literally.

"In our bulletins we the term 'finalist' to emphasize to consumers that they can enter the final group form which our winners are selected simply by entering the sweepstakes," Treller wrote.

Mosley sent a copy of the Treller letter to Nixon (his sixth).

"I felt I achieved a triumph, maybe with Nixon's assistance," Mosley said. "I wrote Nixon again, congratulating him for his efforts. I'll be darned if it didn't come back refused, not opened."

Not that that will keep Mosley from writing again. For what began as a petty irritation with the phantom Mr. Treller has developed into a serious hobby: tweaking corporate America. If corporations were going to treat him like a dope, he'd get them back by acting like one.

So far, Mosley says, he has written letters to about 75 corporations, with an astonishing 75 percent response rate. With the help of one of his 16-year-old students, Matt Garrett, Mosley recently set up his own home page, Mosley's Madness, on the Internet, where he posts his latest letters. Mosley spends an hour or two each week night drafting letters on his word processor.

"Some of the stuff is serious, and some of it is quite off the wall," Mosley said. "It is a humorous outlet for trying to get at what I consider to be unethical or borderline practices. A lot of it intended to be humorous."

When Mosley wrote Borden's ice cream company requesting its recipe for "Napoleon" ice cream, he got a patient and friendly reply.

"They wrote a letter back that I must be confusing it with Neapolitan," Mosley said. "Then they provided me with lots of literature on what Napoleon might have eaten."

Not all his corporate correspondents are amused, however, by Mosley's feints. When Mosley sent a copy of the label -- Robert Stock -- from a shirt that shrank to the New York Stock Exchange, the response was cool. "I asked if someone at the stock exchange was responsible for my shirt shrinking, and if so, he had better be taken to the woodshed," Mosley said. "I could tell the guy was irritated. He told me the Stock Exchange was in securities, and called my letter mildly humorous. I got a kick out of it."

Mosley applied for admittance to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, even though he has never recoded a song. He wrote the newspaper chain, Knight-Ridder, asking for information about knight riders in the Middle Ages.

"I got a long-distance phone call form some fella in Philadelphia," Mosley said. "He thought he was talking to someone who was disturbed. I assured him I understood, and he got to laughing."

Mosley's pleasure at getting a response, or a rise, out of his targets suggests deeper motivations for his new found pastime.

"I am a populist," Mosley said. "It gives me a feeling that I have an identity. A lot of us out there need to be recognized. We aren't numbers.

"I also have a low tolerance for boredom."

Christine Bertelson is a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This column is reprinted with permission. Steve Mosley is a Cape Girardeau native and son of Jean Bell Mosley, a columnist for the Southeast Missourian.