Rex Flanders was man of the land until the end

Pallbearers prepare Rex Flanders for his final ride yesterday, on the back of the old Mazda ute which he sold fruit and vegetables from for many years.Photo/Paul Taylor

Rex Flanders and his reliable ute, stocked with fruit and vegetables, was a familiar sight on the main road out Havelock North way through the years.

Many, many years.

So it was fitting that when it was time for him to make his final journey on this earth it would be in his reliable old Mazda B1600, and that vegetables, which he grew and worked with pretty well all his life, would be part of that journey.

As Dennis Blue, one of his three stepsons said, there was to be no floral arrangement on the casket.

"No flowers - there'd be silverbeet and pumpkins."

Rex Flanders was simply a man of the land.

An old school character who liked nothing more than to get up and get stuck in and get things done.

And he worked as long as he could, despite illness creeping up day by day.

"He had a granny smith orchard out the back of his house and he was out there picking this year... at the age of 82," Mr Blue said.

"That was him - right up to the end he was doing something."

Mr Flanders came from a large family and he was born in the house off Main Rd, which he went on to live in all his life.

"He was born there and he died there."

His life revolved around the land and the fruit and vegetables it could bear.

"He had green fingers alright," Mr Blue said.

"He'd see a tomato he liked at the supermarket, buy it, take it home and dry it out and plant the seeds - never failed."

Mr Flanders worked at Unilever for a time and was also a paddock boss for pea viners in the region.

Retirement wasn't a word he recognised, and his idea of "kicking back" a little was to head for other orchards around the area to do a spot of picking and pruning - "at the hourly rate".

But he would always be remembered by the wider community across the area as the friendly chap ("he always had a smile on his face") sitting on his chair, beside his fruit and veg'-stocked ute, outside his front gate.

"He was so well known for his beans and gherkins - they were the very best," Mr Blue said, adding that every time he mentioned to anyone in the village who his step-dad was they would reply with something along the lines of "the man who sells the beans".

About 30 years ago Mr Flanders met the late Shirley Blue and she and her boys Dennis, Garry and Neill moved from Napier to Havelock North.

Mr Blue said the land had simply been in his stepfather's blood all through the years.

The four things in his life which meant so much were his home, veges, work and the Havelock North Club - so fittingly the celebration of his life was held there yesterday, and equally fittingly he was with his beloved old ute again, which apart from the vegetable arrangement had the beans signage attached.

Mr Blue said he wouldn't have wanted too much of a fuss though, with his stoic and straight-down-the-line approach to life summed up a short time before he died.

"When we had him in hospital recently, at one stage I burst into tears, " he said.

"He looked and me and just said 'you've got to be strong'."