It's only three days until Father's Day and we who miss our fathers can't help but pause to reflect how he continues to influence us every day of our lives.

The first thing that Dad, who died eight years ago, demonstrated was that you could turn out OK, even if your parents gave you a funny name. His name was Waldo, and his parents stuck him with that name long before "Where's Waldo?" became a sight gag for a whole generation. His sisters didn't fare much better, with names like Gladys, Lila, Norma and Alice, names I grew to love. I was the firstborn and glad to be a girl, because he named my brother Waldo, too.

Scratch Dad's farmer tan and there was a playful drugstore cowboy. His hands were big and rough, but soft and gentle on a skittish colt's flank and so careful when he boosted me up into the saddle in front of him when I was 2¹/₂. Every time I wanted Benny to trot, I'd kick Dad in the shins.

Though some of the things he taught me may not seem to have much relevance to my daily life in the city, in an odd way they do:

* In the summer, we would ride horses in the bean fields at twilight so he could check the crop. He taught me to ride my Palomino carefully between the rows. Looking around today, it's easy to see how some stomp on others' livelihood, but I try to pick my way so as not to destroy the produce of others.

* He taught me that if my horse didn't know anything, it was my fault, not hers. I was her trainer, after all, and there was no use yelling at her when she didn't know any better. The same held true when I became a parent.

* He admired my mother, whom he called Sarah, though everyone else called her Ann, but he wasn't above teasing her. A sense of humor can't be taught, it has to be lived.

* He didn't eat before the animals were fed. He came promptly to breakfast at 7 a.m., dinner at noon and supper at 6 p.m. He let my mother, who was always on a "diet," eat off his plate for "just a taste."

* He took me to see every cowboy movie there ever was, and all our albums were cowboy music. I still admire yodeling, and if Dad would have had the voice for it he would have sung "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" to me.

* He shared. His four sisters wouldn't have let him get away with being a hog anyway.

* He made me hoe beans in the hot July sun. I hated it. He would stand at the bottom of the stairs at 7 a.m. and holler, "Lefty, get out of that lazy bed! It's time to go to work." Then he'd add, as an enticement, "I've sharpened your hoe for you," as if a sharp hoe were the one present every teenager yearned for.

* Though he was afraid I'd never find work unless I became a teacher (like his four sisters and my mother) or a nurse (like my cousin Ann), when I announced I wanted to change my major to journalism, he and my mother stayed up into the night discussing what he considered my dim prospects. "Your father and I," my mother said the next morning, "have decided that if you don't want to be a teacher you don't have to." To Dad, that must have felt like a commitment to support me for the rest of my miserable, penniless life.

* He took time out from the harvest season to drive to Kansas to buy me a 2-year-old filly for my 4-H project. Then he helped me saddle her.

* He taught me to love ice cream, though that wasn't that difficult. Far from being adventuresome when it came to food, he ate the oatmeal muffins I made every day one summer so I could perfect them for the county fair. It wasn't until two years later that he admitted, "I've always hated oatmeal muffins," but by then my 4-H project was apple pies. He loved them.

* On show day at the fair, he waded in up to his ankles in the dirty water around the wash rack and scrubbed my heifer's tail in Clorox until it was pure white.

* He was stingy with compliments, so I wouldn't get the "big head." When I was co-valedictorian of my high school class, he complimented my mother.

* He praised me only once, and that was after I had married and moved away from home. I had made an apple pie from scratch and I set it before him topped with vanilla ice cream. "I believe this is the best apple pie I've ever had," he said, quite a compliment given Gram's prowess with pastry.

So how do you remember a dad like mine on Father's Day? In a cookbook called "The All-American Cowboy Grill," I picked out the perfect pie -- Red Bean. He'd love the cookbook (Rutledge Hill Press), which is filled with black and white photos of all the heroes of my childhood and Dad's fatherhood, a time when I played Belle Starr (and later Annie Oakley) to his Randolph Scott, and we never stirred when the "Bonanza" brothers cantered across the TV screen.

Bean pie? Dad wouldn't know whether to cry or laugh, but he'd probably take a piece, hidden as it was under the meringue. We'd also have ice cream. Forget beans when you're eating this pie. The nicely spiced filling is not overly sweet, and it is a protein serving.

"Well, Lefty," he'd say. "This is probably not the best pie I've ever tasted, but maybe it'll bring up the price of beans."

Favorite Red Bean Pie Dessert

* 1 rounded cup cooked and mashed pinto beans (about a 15-ounce can)

* 1 scant cup sugar

* 1 cup milk

* 3 eggs yolks, beaten, whites reserved

* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

* 9-inch unbaked pie crust

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large mixing bowl, combine the pinto beans, sugar, milk, egg yolks, vanilla and nutmeg and mix thoroughly. Pour the mixture into the pie crust. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Optional: Make a meringue topping using the egg whites and ¹/₄ cup granulated sugar. Beat the whites and sugar together until stiff peaks form. Spread on the cooled pie, and bake until golden brown.

Makes 8 servings.

Actress Noel Neill in "The All-American Cowboy Grill"