Hugh Leon Kluttz, an old friend of mine, died just before dawn on Valentine's Day. It was also the Chinese New Year. He was 85 years old. His favorite color was red.

The chances are pretty remote you've ever heard of Hugh Leon Kluttz, and why on earth would you have?

In the best sense of the phrase, Hugh - or "Buddy," as family and close friends called him - was a simple man of the country, a fellow pretty much unknown outside his own small universe, a string bean of a farm boy from the rural Watts Crossroads community of Cabarrus County who once upon a time had to ask out a pretty neighbor's daughter named Betty Jean Sikes several times before she would agree to go on a date.

Hugh was so tall and skinny, according his oldest son, Hugh Jr. - who is also known as "Buddy" - that they had to tie his long legs in knots just so he'd have kneecaps. He dearly loved baseball and "had to be spanked all the way to the school bus," which pretty well described his passion for formal indoor education.

He was natural whiz with numbers, though, a rural polymath with a quick wit a country mile long. He loved to count anything, the story goes, and would amaze friends and family by suddenly declaring, "Twenty-seven cars passed my house this afternoon. Only five of them were red."

Hugh Sr. was the eighth generation of a German clan of farmers, tanners and craftsmen who settled this portion of North Carolina because the western flanks of the Uhwarrie Mountains reminded them of their native Germany. After convincing Betty Jean Sikes to marry him at historic St. John's Lutheran Church in 1950, he settled down to make a life at farming.

A little while later, however, he gave that up and went to work at the leading hardware store in nearby Concord, where he became legendary for his dry jokes and his uncanny ability to repair or engineer almost anything mechanical. Hugh's nickname with his customers was "Nuts and Bolts."

He ran the hardware store for nearly half a century.

'Always Ready to Go'

Here are a few more relevant facts about Hugh L. Kluttz.

He built his modest house on the remains of the Crossroads' original baseball diamond, raised three kids who basically grew up out of doors learning about life in the natural world, ran the concession stand at local softball and baseball games for decades, attended church every Sunday, and helped Betty run the Luther League youth group for years on end. He loved puzzles of any kind.

He lived to travel, too. "Dad kept a packed suitcase and was always ready to go," Hugh Jr. told the many friends and neighbors who turned out to help celebrate Hugh's life last Sunday afternoon at St. John's Church, believed to be the oldest Lutheran church in North Carolina, dating from 1745.

Roughly 250 people had been expected. More than 400 actually showed up. In honor of "Granddaddy Longlegs" Kluttz, almost everybody wore something red.

Before delivering his funny, heartwarming eulogy, Hugh Jr., who was my college roommate back in the 1970s and remains one of my closest friends, pulled out a large digital camera and aimed it at the packed house in the pews.

"I promised Dad I would do this," he explained, grinning. "So I want this half of the church to say 'peanut butter.'" They did so - robustly - and he snapped a photograph of them. Then he turned to the other half of the church and asked them to say "banana." Then he aimed his camera at the choir and asked them to say "fried shrimp," his dad's third favorite food. The choir shouted it out like a shout out to St Peter, and laughter pealed through the historic old building.

Hugh went on to talk about how his father - who never lived anyplace but where he came from - was such an incorrigible traveler that he managed to visit all 50 states and would literally pick up and go anywhere at the drop of a hat. He suffered from such wanderlust he once returned from a spectacular cruise of Alaska's Inward Passage with Betty and decided to turn right around and head back to Alaska with a bus tour of Congregationalists from a neighboring town.

"The idea of his just going and seeing something new forever fascinated Dad," Hugh Jr. said. "Besides, he knew where home was - and how it would always be waiting for him."

Different World Now

As I sat in a middle pew of this joyful celebration of a simple man's well-lived life, missing my wife, who was driving home from her own family event in New York, wedged between a bristly-haired fellow in a tweed jacket and a large florid-faced woman decked out in scarlet who laughed as much as she cried, I couldn't help but think how greatly the world has changed since the first Hugh L. Kluttz came along this rural highway of his forbears.

Does anyone in America these days live out an entire life mere miles from where he was born? Hugh Leon Kluttz got his name when neighbors from an adjacent farm kindly offered to give his parents, Erwin and Myrtie, a nice pair of milk goats if they would name their son "Hugh." They loved the name "Hugh," and the newborn's family needed the goats. So the baby became Hugh Leon Kluttz.

Listening to Hugh's daughter, Ann, talk about her dad's belief that every one of his kids should know how to operate the concession stand at the ballfield, I was reminded of the first time I accompanied my new roommate back to his rural home place - which made Mayberry seem like downtown Charlotte - and how the elder Kluttz even put me to work selling drinks and popcorn and hot dogs.

"Do you know anything about math?" he asked.

"No sir," I answered honestly. "I'm an English major."

"In that case," he told me, "here's what I suggest you do. Talk a whole lot less, count a whole lot more." Ann Kluttz, the kid sister who grew up to earn several college degrees and now teaches at UNC-Charlotte, broke up the church by relating how even as his life ebbed away, her dad's sense of humor refused to die.

"So is Ann your only daughter?" Hugh's hospital physician asked during one of her final visits with him.

"So far," Hugh answered and smiled.

Simple Gifts

Ann introduced her father to Eastern philosophy and medicine. He developed a keen interest in herbs and natural remedies and meditation. His Vietnamese physician and her sister attended the celebration, and the service bulletin explained that prayers for peace would be offered for 100 days for Hugh at 10 different temples.

As we all sang "Simple Gifts," I sat remembering the last time I'd seen Granddaddy Longlegs Kluttz. He was dressed in a tuxedo on a hot August night at St. John's Church, the night my roommate married the preacher's daughter, Mary. Hugh was his son's best man. I was his son's head usher. The service was at dusk, the old church lit only by candles.

"That's some interesting gal you brought to the wedding," Hugh Sr. commented wryly to me at the reception. "Y'all going to get hitched up too?"

"Probably not," I said, explaining that my girlfriend Diane had inexplicably become a Marist during our just-completed summer road trip to California and back, possibly because I stopped at half a dozen driving ranges and every Krispy Kreme we passed along the way. We argued across half a dozen states about everything from the Vietnam war to the popularity of day-glo-orange golf balls.

Daddy Longlegs laughed. "Traveling with someone tells you as much about yourself as it does them," said the wise countryman who would eventually visit all 50 states and Alaska twice.

Hugh Jr.'s first marriage lasted a decade and produced a lovely daughter named Anna. She recently graduated from Clemson. Hugh's second wife, a delightful Pennsylvanian named Susan, read a passage from Corinthians, and I saw both Anna and her mom after we all went outside to place Hugh's remains in the old burying ground next door.

Like a Reunion

Once again it was dusk, and everyone held candles as Hugh's children placed the reliquary box holding Hugh's ashes into the cold spring earth. The box was made from old-growth pine boards harvested from a neighbor's place.

The sky to the west was pleated with bands of gold and purple, Lenten colors, the hues of reflection and rebirth. I saw birds flying north. Over on the ballfield just beyond the church, a man was hurling a ball and his dog was chasing it, out of his mind with joy. Die every day. Be reborn every day, Nikos Kazantzakis once suggested.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I was pleased to turn and find, of all people, my actual oldest friend Nathan standing there, smiling. I hadn't seen him in years, more than a decade. Nathan and I were boys together, camping, fishing, hiking the Blue Ridge, worrying our moms to pieces. They were also best friends, too.

During college, Hugh and I attended Nathan's wedding to Martha, and Nathan and Hugh also became very good friends. We hugged. Nathan told me I hadn't gotten any smaller. I told him he could finally fill out a suit. He quipped that he only wears it to funerals these days.

"Someone commented that it's hard to tell the difference between our weddings and our funerals," Hugh remarked as the three of us we walked toward the fellowship hall, where the party seemed more like a reunion than a farewell. Old couples ate punch and cookies, swapped news, checked out each other's grandchildren and talked about the weather while teenage couples flirted in the corners.

Projected photographs of Hugh Leon Kluttz's long and happy life flashed on a large screen, and I saw folks I hadn't seen in more than 30 years. The last person I went to speak with was Betty, the new widow. She was a cute as ever, tiny as a bird, being gently mobbed by old friends who'd come down the road to share grief, joy, food, love.

"I saw you in the church," Betty said in my ear. "Don't worry, I wasn't going to let you get away."

I kissed her goodbye. She made my promise to bring my wife the next time I came to visit. "Don't wait 20 years, though," she said with a laugh.

It was a beautiful night when I got back on Highway 73 heading east for the ancient Uhwarrie Hills under a shining half moon. I phoned my wife to see how she was progressing and was happy to know she had reached Greensboro and was heading down 220 South, racing me home to the Sandhills.

"Tell me about the funeral," she said.

"One of the nicest times I've had in a long time," I said. "They closed with 'Joy to the World.'"

"Oh," she said. "I wish I could have been there."

Best-selling author Jim Dodson, editor of PineStraw magazine and Sunday essayist with The Pilot, can be contacted at jasdodson@thepilot.com.