Whether you were a Pine Hill Golf Club or a once-a-year visitor to the South Brewer course, you knew owner, proprietor, and builder Bob Little.

And if you knew Bob Little – even a little – it wasn’t hard to figure out what he thought.

“Bob was unique,” former Pine Hill pro Mark Hall said on Friday. “You knew exactly where you stood with Bob. He was an original.”

That “original,” a big man with a big voice who carved a working-man’s golf course out of his father’s rolling cow pastures, died at his Brewer home on Friday. He was 76.

“Bob was like a dad to me,” Hall said. “Bob Little was someone special.”

Little was devoted to his golf course, which he built with friends Jackie Brochu and John Viricel and opened back in 1962.

Brochu grew up working on the Little farm and got hooked on golf by playing with Little.

“We were both left-handed, and left-handed clubs were rare back then,” Brochu said. “How he got me started was just chipping around with a 9-iron out back. We dug a hole in the lawn and a neighbor would come over and we’d chip for cigarettes.”

Brochu said he enjoyed building the course but he didn’t get rich doing it.

“We helped him for a lifetime membership, that’s all,” Brochu said.

“It was work and it was fun. We were young then. And Bob was small then,” Brochu said with a chuckle.

Little could often be at the course, holding court and swapping stories with his friends.

“Bob would be in there at 5 a.m., every morning, even during the winter,” Hall said. “I’d come in at 6 o’clock and he’d say ‘What’s wrong with you? Did you wet the bed or something?'”

Even in the winter, a regular group of club members would head to the course off Mill Street to play weekend games of cribbage or pinochle, Hall said.

“They’d come down to the course to talk to Bob,” he said.

Brochu said one of Little’s favorite topics was politics.

“He was a staunch Republican,” Brochu said. “So whenever he’d talk about Republicans, I’d say I was a Democrat. And whenever the Democrats got started, I’d say I was a Republican.”

Paul Goody fondly remembers his longtime friend.

“I spent a lot of time with Bob,” he said. “At Pine Hill, but up here in my game room, too, with a jug or two. Or up north, hunting.”

Little started hunting with the Goodys after the death of Paul’s father.

“Bob kind of took his place,” he said. “We needed four to play cribbage. Plus, he was a character. He knew a million jokes.”

Goody remembers another trip he took with Little to watch the Red Sox and Yankees play, when a Bostonian tried to tell the Mainer to consider relocating to Beantown.

“[The guy] said, ‘If you moved to Boston, you could see the Red Sox play every day,’ Goody said. “Bob said, ‘I wouldn’t move to Boston if you gave me the deed to … Fenway Park.’ He didn’t want any part of the rat race.”

Hall said Little wanted to create a course that the average player could have fun on.

He succeeded in building that course, and loved going to the course every day.

“The golf course was his entire life,” Hall said. “You could go in there with $10 million and he wouldn’t sell the golf course.”

A service of special remembrance will be held at a time to be announced at a later date. Gifts in his memory may be sent to the American Cancer Society, Maine Division Inc., 52 Federal St., Brunswick, 04011.