Lessons, questions and observations from the Minnesota Golf Show, which ended its three-day run Sunday at the Minneapolis Convention Center and was a 25-hour surge of adrenaline for yours truly, operating out of Booth 602 …

… oh, one thing first. I don’t approach the game from the middle of the fairway anymore, which is to say this will not be typical golf commentary. Don’t expect thoughts on some club pro’s demonstration of the stack-and-tilt swing, which is as foreign to me as Isao Aoki was in 1980, when he was leading the U.S. Open and I was a small-town kid who had previously heard of exactly zero golfers from a far-off land known as Japan:

— Make sure people know what you’re selling. I gotta give myself a C-minus on that one. The most prominent item at my Golf Show booth was a version of the artwork below:

More than one person asked me what golf course this was — the “was” intended to mean “is.” Yep — they thought I was manning a booth promoting a course that’s still operating. And I could almost hear them wondering to themselves, “What in the name of Duffy Waldorf is that junkyard, and why in the name of Forrest Fezler would I want to play there? They might want to spend their next 20 dollars on maintenance!”

The photo is, of course, a remarkable piece composed and taken by friend and collaborator Peter Wong, captured on the lost course at Whitewater State Park in southeastern Minnesota, and it wound up as the cover image on my new book, “Fore! Gone.” But clearly, I confused people with the photo, which I also have turned into a lost-course poster, and by the time I realized it, it was pretty much too late to hand-craft a large sign in the back of the booth with this proclamation: “IT’S NOT A GOLF COURSE. IT’S A BOOK, DAMMIT!”

— Tell me more, tell me more. I can’t deny some trepidation as patrons started filing in on Friday. I knew I had done a ton of homework on lost golf courses since mid-2010, but I half expected 50 people to stop by and say, “You missed this one.”

Didn’t happen. Not much, anyway. At least a half-dozen people mentioned the old Cedar Hills course in Eden Prairie, which was a ski hill in the wintertime (and apparently closed in part because poo-bahs at Flying Cloud Airport were concerned about the remote possibility of low-flying aircraft giving propeller buzz cuts to tall golfers on the property). But I didn’t write about Cedar Hills, because my research indicated it closed after the year 1999, and that’s where I cut off my research.

Props, however, to the two Golf Show patrons who mentioned long-ago lost courses
I hadn’t heard of, one in Rush City and the other in Foley. I never came across old courses in those towns while researching, but I don’t doubt they existed. I’d love to hear from someone with details.

Actually, I have to believe I one-upped some of the Cedar Hills contingent by springing a lost course on the many people I met from the Eden Prairie/Chaska/Chanhassen/Shakopee area. Not one person had heard of the old Mudcura Golf Club off what is now Flying Cloud Drive, and only one duly impressed me by having heard of the long-gone Mudcura Sanitarium that was adjacent to the golf course. (Want to know more? No problem. Buy the book.)

— What else is lost? A couple of months ago, I posted news of more Minnesota golf courses that had or were about to close for good. Time for an update:

For one thing, I missed a course: Elm Creek in Plymouth closed as of the end of the 2013 season and will give way to high-end homes, the Star Tribune has reported. For another, one closed course — Mississippi National in Red Wing — appears set to reopen. The city of Red Wing website noted in a Nov. 26 posting that the city and the Red Wing Municipal Golf Corporation struck a five-year lease agreement, and that the non-profit group would operate the course and reopen it in 2014. “The City,” the website posting noted, “will contribute no more than $41,000 in financial support for 2014 operations, and no more than $169,000 in Capital Investment in the golf course in 2014.”

Also, someone told me Friday at the Golf Show that Sawmill Golf Course in Grant is now closed. One Minnesota golf website has reported that, but the posting appears to have been misleading at best. Newspapers including the St. Paul Pioneer Press have reported that a lease agreement between the owners of the Sawmill land and the group that operated the golf course has been terminated, but it appears likely Sawmill will remain open in the 2014 season, albeit under new management.

— Did I miss something in fifth-grade geography? I could swear Sister Mary Ellen (no, not Sister Mary Elephant; I really did have Sister Mary Ellen as a grade-school teacher) taught us that Minneapolis and St. Paul were the two most-populous cities in Minnesota.

Not so, judging by the purely unscientific survey of folks I talked to in the show’s three days.

As an entree’ to hooking them for a book sale (occasionally the strategy even worked), I would ask visitors to my booth where they were from, in hopes of telling them about a lost golf course nearby.

It went something like this.

“So, where you from?”

“Coon Rapids.”

“Coon Rapids.”

“Maple Grove.”

“Plymouth.”

“Coon Rapids.”

“Minneapolis.”

“Coon Rapids.”

“Plymouth.”

“Eden Prairie.”

“Coon Rapids.”

“Right here.” (Gosh, thanks for narrowing it down, pal.)

“Coon Rapids.”

“St. Paul.”

“Maple Grove.”

“Anoka.”

“Coon Rapids.”

It was weird. What, did half the state’s population climb into canoes, row upriver 20 miles and resettle in Coon Rapids?

There is no point to all of this, other than to observe the unusual concentration of Coon Rapidsians, or whatever they are called, who stopped at my booth. Nonetheless, I did appreciate their stopping, and I enjoyed chatting briefly about the lost Jake’s / Mississippi Golf Course in their fair city.

— Best new gadget: The term “gadget” doesn’t do it justice, but the heated golf-cart seat covers and blankets from Joe Pro Products are new and cool. Or warm, actually. They fit neatly over any standard golf-cart seat and, according to the product website, are made of “soft synthetic lambs wool on one side (and) durable nylon on the other. Washable and waterproof also available in multiple colors.” Prices and packages range from $49.95 to $109.95. More info is at www.joeproproducts.com.

The products are the brainchild of Joe Stansberry, a longtime accomplished Minnesota golfer. I’m just guessing the inspiration might have come from a chilly, windswept trek down the fairways of Royal Portrush or Royal County Down, where Joe, a former European Senior Tour player, might have gotten his tush Royally Frozen.

Winona Golf Club was Minnesota’s first lost golf course, ditched by its founders in autumn 1897. Bryn Mawr Golf Club was Minnesota’s most historic lost course, spawning both Minikahda (1898) and then Interlachen (1910). Rich Acres was Minnesota’s most popular lost course, playing hosts to tens of thousands of rounds annually until it was replaced by an airport runway in 1999.

Yet none of those, or any of the state’s other known 80-plus lost golf courses, attracts curiosity quite like Westwood Hills.

In the off-and-on three years since I started researching lost golf courses, and in the month and a half since my lost-course book has been in print, I have fielded more questions about Westwood Hills than any other course. Maybe more than questions about all other lost courses combined.

I think it’s because Westwood Hills serves as such a bridge, in a number of ways.

Chronologically, the old-but-not-really-antique course in St. Louis Park bridges a gap between the scores of long-ago lost courses that closed in the 1930s (Great Depression) or 1940s (effects of World War II) and the dozens that have closed since Rich Acres’ shutdown. The course closed in 1961, so there still are older golfers who remember it and are interested in its history, plus another whole generation of golfers who might have heard of the place from parents or uncles but don’t know the first thing about it.

Geographically, the course is a bit of a bridge from urban Minneapolis and St. Paul to the suburbs. It’s not like St. Louis Park is far-flung, so there are thousands of Minnesotans familiar with the city, and with the general area of the golf course’s resting place — just southeast of the intersections of I-394 and U.S. 169.

Sociologically, for lack of a better term, the 27-hole public, daily-fee course seems to have bridged a gap between the more-exclusive private clubs of the western suburbs — Westwood Hills was, incidentally, adjacent to the esteemed Minneapolis Golf Club — and the public courses played by most of Minnesota’s golfers. In fact, an old Westwood Hills scorecard, dated 1933, advertises thusly: “Where Private Club Courtesy and Playing Conditions Prevail.”

All of which is a way of working toward a little Westwood Hills gem that was thrown my way last weekend.

Mark Oestreich, manager at Westwood Hills Nature Center, was kind enough to track me down at a book-signing event, and he dropped off an old — very old, in fact — map of the Westwood Hills neighborhood. A scan of the map is at the top of this post; you can click on it for a closer view.

The map is dated 1931, two years after Westwood Hills Golf Course (then named Westwood Hills Country Club) opened and is titled “1931 – Village of St. Louis Park.” At that time, St. Louis Park still had not incorporated into a city.

The map, along with a brief discussion with Oestreich, confirms most of what I had either known or surmised about the Westwood Hills Golf Course area and had reported in my book, “Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses 1897-1999.” Most of the southern borders of Westwood Hills GC were in fact adjacent to Minneapolis Golf Club (there is a humorous anecdote in my book about Westwood and Minneapolis golfers getting mixed up during their rounds). A few observations:

— The course grounds apparently went as far east as Flag Avenue on a small stretch.

— The course did in fact cross Texas Avenue — it is labeled Columbus Avenue on the map; the street later was renamed — and went as far south as Cedar Lake Road and as far east as Irving Avenue in that section. I’m not 100 percent sure, but my assumption is that Irving Avenue is now either Sumter Avenue or Rhode Island Avenue. A portion of that area is now occupied by St. Louis Park Middle School, and old aerial maps suggest that two of Westwood Hills’ greens rest on or near the school building itself. The course in that area did not cross north of Franklin Avenue, which now is Lamplighter Park.

— The course did not go as far north as I-394, which in 1931 was known as Superior Boulevard. In Westwood Hills’ western section, Douglas Avenue was its northern boundary. And I have to profess ignorance here — I’m not sure what Douglas Avenue’s modern-day name is. It appears to closely coincide with what is now known as West 16th Street.

— The most interesting aspect of the map, to me, was the “Fox Farm” designation along the northern edge. This would have been along Superior Boulevard (now I-394) as far east as what is now Texas Avenue and as far west as what is now Flag Avenue. Oestreich had told me last fall about the old fox farm, but he wasn’t aware it stretched as far west as Flag Avenue. That connects a couple of dots for me. In the book, David Chapman, who grew up in the neighborhood, told me about an area he had explored with his friends as a kid. He and his buddies labeled it “Bones Woods” because of the large, old bones they found in the woods west of what is now Westwood Lake. To Chapman as a youth, he said they looked like old dinosaur bones.

More likely, they were bones from horse carcasses. Oestreich told me that the owners of the fox farm would kill horses on the property and feed them to the foxes. He also told me over the weekend that some of the area’s residents were none to keen at the time about occasionally hearing gunshots in the neighborhood. (This was a semi-rural area at the time.) Seems to add up to me — I’m guessing the southwest corner of the fox farm, near the northern border of Westwood Hills Golf Course and southwest of what is now Westwood Lake, is where Bones Woods was, and that those were horse bones you discovered there, Mr. Chapman.

I would love to hear more about the history of the neighborhood, so please feel free to comment, even if it’s to debunk what has been reported. More importantly, Oestreich is doing research on the history of Westwood Hills Nature Center and the Westwood Hills neighborhood. He is most interested in trying to put together an exact routing of Westwood Hills Golf Course. There are a handful of old green sites and tee boxes on the site (I found only one, but Oestreich says there are more, and he would know), and Oestreich would like to connect his own dots to know exactly which holes were on the nature center property and beyond. I am sure he would welcome a call at the nature center.

No need for much editorial commentary on this one. Golf courses, for better or worse, come and go — although it is disconcerting to see this many of them going.

Links Magazine rehashes numbers issued by the National Golf Foundation: “According to the NGF, only 14 courses (in 18-hole equivalents) opened in the U.S. last year, while 157.5 closed.”

I don’t have exact numbers in Minnesota, but the proportion in the past 13 years has to be similar, if not worse. I know of four Minnesota courses that saw their final rounds of golf in 2013 (Parkview in Eagan, Sauk Centre Country Club, and Lakeview and Red Oak in Mound), and I know of zero new courses that opened. (Update, Feb. 18, 2014: Sundance Golf & Bowl in Dayton and Elm Creek in Plymouth also have closed.)

In 50 years, after I’m long gone, someone could have some pretty solid material on hand for the sequel to “Fore! Gone.”

Here is a link to the Links Magazine post on the NGF numbers:

http://www.linksmagazine.com/the-buzz-article/of-courses

Jim Bjork recently contacted me to pass along some golden nuggets about Hilltop Public Golf Links, the subject of Chapter 4, “Bang It Off the Tower,” in “Fore! Gone.”

Bjork’s personal connection to Minnesota is, one might say, thin. “I was conceived in Minnesota (ha!) but born in Illinois after Dad moved in 1954. I moved to Tennessee in 1985,” Bjork wrote as part of an email conversation.

But “Dad,” also known as Clifford Bjork, was intimately connected to Minnesota, and to Hilltop, the lost Columbia Heights golf course. Jim Bjork wrote that his father played in the old Hilltop Twilight League.

The photo atop this post is of Clifford and Maybeth Bjork (Maybeth was Clifford’s wife and Jim’s mother) enjoying a beverage on the Hilltop grounds. The photo is undated, but it certainly goes back a ways, considering Hilltop closed in 1946. (Update, 2/7/14: Jim Bjork said he believes the photo dates to 1940 or 1941.)

The Bjorks look dapper and classy, don’t they, in their golf attire? One small caveat: This might not be exactly what they looked like.

“Mom worked for a place called Pako,” wrote Jim Bjork, “which I believe did work on developing photos. Mom was one of those hired to ‘touch up and give color’ to black and white photos. She colored that picture I sent to you. How she did it I never did learn.”

The background of the photo of the Bjorks is as historically significant as the foreground is becoming. Jim Bjork also passed along a rescanned image of the background in the photo — it is the photo above. Makes you wonder if Hilltop wasn’t visible for miles around in the days it hosted golfers.

“HILLTOP GOLF LINKS (PUBLIC)” shouts the lettering on the clubhouse roof. Considering Hilltop’s perch on high ground in Columbia Heights — the clubhouse was near the intersection of 45th Avenue Northeast and Benjamin Street NE (on the south) and what is now Chatham Road (on the north) — it seems likely the rooftop advertising reached lower ground well to the south and west, to the southern parts of Columbia Heights and maybe even into northeast Minneapolis.

The building next to the clubhouse is interesting as well. I’m not sure whether it is part of the clubhouse or whether it is the manager’s residence, which was next to the clubhouse and still stands today, in the form of a house on the northeast corner of 45th and Chatham. The building in the photo and the modern-day house have similar structures but not identical, so I must say I’m puzzled.

By the way, if Clifford looks much at ease in the photo, it’s for two good reasons. One: “They truly loved each other very much!” Jim Bjork wrote of Clifford and Maybeth. And two: Clifford knew his way around a golf course.

“He once told me his biggest accomplishment in golf was that he played with and beat the Minnesota state amateur and the Minnesota state public links champion in the year they were the champion,” Jim Bjork wrote. “Who they were….where they played I never learned. Dad also caddied in the 1930 US Open at Interlachen. All I know about that is that he caddied for a local pro who did not make the cut.

“Dad was the only surviving child of Swedish immigrants. He grew up caddying…and working at a driving range. Golf was the only game he really ever knew and was interested in. It was the game that helped ‘Americanize’ him and he loved it very much.”

Additional update, 2/7/14: Jim Bjork passed along another photo (below) of his father; Mike Rak confirms that the photo was taken near the tee box of the 16th hole at Hilltop. The body of water is Highland Lake, also known as Peck’s Lake, which golfers had to play over a corner of.