OLEAN -- I'm writing this on Sunday, June 17, Father's Day, which puts me in mind of my own late father, B. Quinn Hanchette.

The "B" stood for Brayton, some ancient relative or friend my grandparents wanted to honor, and "Quinn" was my paternal grandma's maiden name--that of an Irish farm

My father much preferred Quinn. No one called him Brayton, nor wanted to, without being corrected.

He's been dead almost 30 years now and would be more than 101 years old had he lived. It's somehow shocking to think of that, because my childhood memories are of Quinn in his prime middle years--usually strict, gruff, friendly and sure of himself, yet sometimes distant, troubled, aloof and seemingly fearful of failure.

He was 36 when I was born, almost 10 months to the day after Pearl Harbor Day. The family story was he expected to be drafted, or intended to volunteer for World War II, and wanted--if worst came to worst--to leave a third child in memory beside my two older brothers. I could never verify that. My mother, Monica, would never talk much about motive, only assuring me I was loved and wanted as much as my siblings.

In any case, when he tried to enlist, Army recruiters and other government personnel told him they wanted much younger men first and--noting his industrial acumen as a paper mill manager--made Quinn an important federal coordinator of cardboard and carton production in northern New York to advance the war effort.

My brothers and I were impressed, but he never bragged much about that. My father was very patriotic and much-admired the military. In later years, when as an inquisitive teenager in the mid-50s I'd ask about his important oversight role in container production, he'd only lament that he'd been too young for World War I and too old for World War II.

Not that I had--as a child--many in-depth conversations with my father. I later found out from my mother that in the late 1940s and early 1950s he was beset by business troubles, mired in an eventually failing effort to buy the paper mill in which he was treasurer and operations manager. The private owner had promised to sell it to him, but after he'd taken on partners and raised the money, it was sold out from under him. He ran it, and other paper mills in the area, successfully until retirement.

Quinn was proud of his job. He once told me he started in that business during the early Depression years when jobs were scarce by applying for a bookkeeper's position. With a two-year business school diploma in hand, he listened as the boss explained that previous applicants had failed to balance the books in which a penny differential kept appearing. If he could find the missing penny, the job was his.

It took him only two hours and 20 minutes, he later told me. Sounds a bit quaint these days, when millions of dollars that can't be found on either side of the ledger are casually written off or carried forward.

I once asked him which decade he missed the most. He instantly said the Roaring Twenties, a raucous, rowdy, anything-goes time in the country's history during which my father came of age. At the time, I viewed him as a somewhat dour and austere man, so it gave me a new perspective.

He had many weaknesses, as we all do. He liked his beer way too much. He preferred Carling's Black Label or Utica Club, but would drink almost any brand. Sometimes he wasn't much good at communicating directly with his sons, at least with his youngest.

When my oldest brother and his wife were expecting their first child, it was decided by my parents that the time had come when I was old enough to learn about the birds and bees. I guess I was about 7 or 8.

My mother assigned the heart-to-heart talk to my father. They didn't teach this mysterious stuff in most schools during the post-World War II era. Dad hemmed and hawed his way through it with vague biological and social references and such arcane vocabulary that he left me thinking one could get pregnant by dancing cheek-to-cheek, or through intimate conversation. My grade school buddies later set me straight.

The anecdotes pile up in reverie. Quinn could be unintentionally funny and he never seemed to resent oft-told anecdotes about incidents others might find embarrassing. One summer, out fishing from a rowboat in front of our Lake Ontario cottage, he hooked a giant carp--a barely edible bottom-feeder fish that sports tough body-armor scales and appears to be a throwback to the Jurassic period. Unable to boat it with all the thrashing, Quinn thought to boat the creature by chilling it out by conking it over the head with one of the oars. Instead, he merely broke the oar in half.

My mother, cooking an eventually cold supper, watched unamused from shore as he slowly paddled back in, canoe-like and zig-zagging, with the remaining oar. In later years, he would sometimes tell the tale on himself, embellishing it with the old vaudeville joke about how to cook a carp. Had he landed the creature, Quinn would relate, he would have prepared it from this popular Colonial-period recipe, once used by those hungry pilgrims who set foot on Plymouth Rock:

"First, you get a polished foot-square board made exclusively of white pinewood. Carefully scale and filet the bone-filled fish, remove as many remaining small bones as possible, then marinate it in a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, thyme, Tabasco sauce, ground black pepper, and rare sea salt. Bake the fish over a hot apple wood fire--preferably in a crude homemade mud oven--carefully turning and basting it the while with the above juices and perhaps a dash or two of good bourbon or sour mash whiskey. Then, after about 65 minutes, or when the carp appears flaky and done, slowly remove it from the charred baking board, throw it away, and eat the pinewood slab."

This never failed to crack up my brothers and me. My mother saw the humor in it but would always remind Quinn he hadn't caught that carp, and had made supper late.

Speaking of Father's Day, Quinn was one of those men who actually loved to don a chef's hat and corny labeled apron and then barbecue all afternoon for friends and relatives. I still miss his charcoal-roasted chicken. (He also loved some stovetop recipes, preparing his own special spicy tomato juice from homegrown vegetables--a concoction that could cure a hangover or brace one for an entire day. I still have the recipe. I have friends who practically demand the product.)

It was at these backyard affairs that he would try to goad my older brothers and me into athletic contests. I was a fairly successful high school wrestler--a sport my father had been almost unaware of until I started winning matches and he came to watch (which, of course, thrilled me). One brother, Jim, is about a decade older, and Bill is almost a dozen years older. Jim was good in football and baseball. Bill was good in football and boxing. In college, he was undefeated in the latter.

In one of my college summers, Quinn insisted at one such gathering when I was boasting too much that his sons have a wrestle-off. I had little trouble dispatching Jim with a double knee-drop takedown and half-nelson pin, and Dad--pronouncing me the victor and waving his Black Label--said OK, now you have to show you can beat Bill.

I was young, working on a state highway crew and in good shape, and figured I had a decent shot of wearing down my oldest brother with some sophisticated maneuvers. Bill had other ideas. I charged in, intent on a fancy takedown hold, and Bill simply unleashed a whistling right cross--connecting flush with my jaw, knocking me flat on my back, and (I swear) making me hear chirping birdies. I guess they were in the nearby crabapple tree.

Bill was pronounced the sibling champion, and my father took me aside. "Always figure out your opponent's expected plan of attack. You should have known Bill would resort to his best punch."

But, I protested, this was supposed to be a wrestling-only contest.

My father shot back, "Did I say anything about rules?"

My brothers and I sorely miss both parents, but we miss our father in a sort of unexpected way. We must. We subconsciously made sure we'd have reminders of his presence in our lives. Today, many of Quinn's grandsons --including one of my own sons--and great-grandsons bear his middle name as their own middle name, or even their first name.

Being a father is a tough and sometimes thankless job. Like many fathers everywhere, Quinn taught his lessons through doing, not speechifying. We never really discussed the paternal role with him--at least I didn't. And while he and my mother put all three sons through college at great personal sacrifice, and while we verbally thanked them for it, we never really made it clear to them, nor ever really foresaw or suspected, how much we'd miss them both in our waning years.

If your parents are still alive, and you didn't tell them on Father's Day how much you appreciated and loved them, pick up the phone and do it now, even if you're thinking of several reasons not to. One day, you'll be happy you followed this advice.