BROOKS – At first blush, the sign that welcomes visitors to Carl Brown’s hillside golf course doesn’t seem to fit the friendly, low-key owner who greets everybody with a kind word and a smile.

Country View Golf Club is, according to the sign, “Maine’s Most Scenic.”

To Mainers – which Brown is [He’s lived on this unnamed hill since 1936, for your information] that might sound like bragging. Putting on airs. Puffing yourself up.

Head out onto the well-manicured fairways of Brown’s course, and it sounds like something else.

The truth. Or if not, something very close to it.

“We have a lot of people who come to play, and you look up and they’re over there sitting underneath the trees,” Brown says.

Some golf course owners might be tempted to roust the sight-seers and make them continue their round. Not Brown.

“Just don’t make everybody [behind you] wait,” Brown says. “Go ahead and take your time. Where the hell are we going?”

That attitude defines Country View, a nine-hole delight that meanders across the top of a hill in rural Brooks. According to the club’s brochure, it’s 28 miles to Waterville and Bangor from here, and 12 miles to Belfast.

It might as well be 200.

On a clear day, you can gaze to the west from the seventh tee and see the White Mountains, all the way over in New Hampshire. From the clubhouse window, you can see both Cadillac Mountain in Bar Harbor and the Camden Hills.

And then there’s the patchwork quilt of greens and browns that make up the farms on the surrounding rolling hills.

The course’s name was a matter of public debate back in the 1960s, as townspeople brainstormed to help the Browns out. Carl’s then 6-year-old daughter, Claudette, came up with the solution at the supper table.

“She said, ‘Why don’t they name it Country View? That’s what you can see,'” Carl Brown says with a chuckle.

They did.

The view aside, Brown’s course is a well-maintained nine-hole layout that covers 55-60 acres of the 200-acre hilltop parcel.

“We try to keep it decent,” says Brown. “I guess our theory is, we’re out in the country a long ways, and if we don’t keep it decent and good, they’re not gonna drive down from Bangor.”

Brown, who owns the club with his brother, Steve, says that while Country View has changed plenty since their father, Ralph, built it in 1963, other things are the same.

“Dad did well laying it out,” Brown says. “He really, I think, had a foresight. We think it’s kind of been a legacy to the town.”

Brown’s father owned the course from 1963-68 before selling it. The course was out of family hands until 1979, when Carl and Steve bought it back.

Carl Brown, who had survived severe injuries he suffered during a 1973 construction accident, was ready for a change.

Brown nearly died in the accident, and refers to it as if he did: “I got killed on a front-end loader in 1973,” he says. And he’s not exaggerating. Not exactly.

For six minutes, he stopped breathing. Then a member of his crew – the only member who hadn’t been able to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when he’d had them trained in CPR a few weeks earlier – saved his life.

“He got a little bit of life into me,” Brown says.

Brown’s career change was a natural, in that it returned him to the hill he knew so well.

“I’m just a country bumpkin,” says Brown, who heads to Florida with his wife for a couple of months each winter. “Bangor’s plenty of city for us.”

Ask Brown to name his favorite hole, and he can’t. It’s just like comparing his children. He loves ’em equally.

“As far as one hole against another? I don’t have [a preference],” he says. “I don’t. Geez. I think it’s all kind of nice.”

He’s right.

Among the holes guests single out are No. 9 and No. 7.

The ninth is an original: It’s a 145-yard par 3 that challenges players to hit their tee shot over six oak and ash trees that sit midway down the slope to the green.

“We had a fella in here from England one time,” Brown says. “He said, ‘I’ve been everywhere and played golf, and I’ve never seen a hole as unique as that.”

And on No. 7, players check the progress of groups in front of them with a periscope. After about 100 yards of flat fairway, the 340-yard hole descends rapidly to the green. From the top, the view is worth savoring.

“A fella from Ohio came in one day and said, ‘You know, that reminds me of being in heaven,'” Brown says. “You come out over the pitch and look at the green, and out in the distance [you enjoy the scene]. It’s just like being in heaven.”

Carl Brown won’t disagree.

COUNTRY VIEW GOLF CLUB

Holes: Nine

Yards: 3,015 (men), 2,480 (women)

Par: 36

Greens fees: 9 holes: $14; 18 holes: $22; all day: $30

Memberships: $425 single; $580 husband-wife; $175 student; $250 college student

Tee times: Not necessary

Directions: From Bangor: Take I-95 to Exit 42, follow Route 69 to Route 7 south. Country View is on the right; From Belfast: Follow Route 137/7 out of town, then take Route 7. Country View is on the left.

Footwear: No metal spikes

Phone: 722-3161

John Holyoke can be reached at 990-8214, 1-800-310-8600, or by e-mail at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net.