well, now joining us on our booktv set is radio talk show host, columnist and lawyer larry elder. his most recent book, "dear father, dear son: two lives, eight hours." mr. elder, who is randolph elder? >> guest: randolph elder was my father. you heard the term tiger mom? my dad was a junk yard dog dad. he was one of the first black marines, and i knew that my dad was a marine, and because of his gruff exterior i sort of thought that marines were just sort of mean, brutal people.

my brothers and i could not stand my father. i mean, we couldn't stand the s.o.b.. we thought of him as cold, as uncare, as unloving, unlovable, and whenever he came into the house, it always changed the atmosphere in the home. when i was 15 years old, my father and i had a furious fight. we didn't speak to each other for ten years. so the book is all about the conversation my dad had when i was 25 years old a conversation that i thought was going to last ten minutes, it ended up lasting eight hours. and he morphed into this kind, caring, sensitive man that i completely misunderstood my whole life. so the book really is a 247-page apology to the man. >> host: in here you write that your dad felt during that conversation that he hadn't done anything wrong in your childhood. >> guest: he hadn't. what i planned on doing when i was flying into l.a. to meet with him was to be very calm and talk about all the things that he'd ever done to me and my brothers that i thought were

abusive, mean-spirited, what i thought were bad things for a parent. and so i promised myself i was going to be calm, i sat down, and i unloaded on his put for 20 minutes. and this and this very angry. my father sat there, and he said very quietly, i was afraid of my daddy too. my father never mentioned his father. there was kind of a no-fly zone over talking about my dad's life. and in this conversation i found out that my father did not know the name of his biological father, he never met his biological father. i didn't know that until this conversation. it turns out my father had an abusive relationship with his mother. his mother and he quarreled. my dad came home from school one day 13 years old, had a fight with the mother's then-boyfriend, another man, not elder. the mother sided with the boyfriend, throws my father out of the house. athens, georgia, just a few years before the beginning of the great depression, 13 years

old, and he never returned home. and the on the front porch of the home his real mother yelled at him and said you'll be home, either that or you'll be in the penitentiary, or you'll be in prison, in the cemetery or in prison, is what she told him. and my father went next door and then to another door to another house to get a job. and so my father literally went door to door to find some sort of job. he ended up becoming a pullman porter for the trains, and my father visited california at the time. and he thought kind of he'd make a mental note of it, maybe he'd come back to california. so he comes out of the service, he goes to chattanooga, tennessee, he walks to an unemployment office. the woman tells him he has to go back out and go through the colored only door. he says, this is bs, they don't have colored doors in california, i'm going to get a job as a cook. he goes restaurant to restaurant, and they say, i'm sorry, sir, you have no

references which is their way of saying in california, we don't hire black people. when he was in chattanooga, they told him we flat out don't hire n-words. he walks through a door, asks for a job, he says what time do you close? 8:30, 5, my dad sat there the next day 59 8:30 til 5. lady calls him up and says, sir, i've got a job. my dad says what is it? she says it's a job cleaning toilets. my dad worked at that job for ten years, took a second job for ten years also as a janitor, cooked for a family on the weekend, went tonight school to get his ged that he never got. i never saw a human being work that hard. so you add his work ethic, how much time he spent working, how little sleep he had, plus he comes home and is greeted by three rambunctious boys, okay, he wasn't ward cleaver, i give him a mulligan. my dad hit me with a belt.

when i was having a book tour with somebody, i mentioned it, and the interviewer says, he didn't hit you with the telephone cord? and that was in the next chapter. this is how people disciplined people in those days, especially if you were from the south, especially if you came from a background where you had a mean-spirited dad, quote, in your own life. the man that my dad is named after, elder, was abusive, he was an alcoholic who physically beat him and his mother. again, all of this my dad spills out in this eight hour conversation. and i realize that my daddied the best he could by his definition. his way of punishing me was kinder, gentler and more sensitive than the way he was punished. my dad felt i put a roof over your held, clothing on your back, what's the problem? he never had that. i wanted ward cleaver. my dad was not ward cleaver. i give him a mulligan. >> host: your dad also said to you that he was of there for you. >> guest: and that's the other --

>> host: he stay with the his mother. >> and that's the other point. here i am thinking that my daddied not love me. he got up every day, he came home, he wasn't abusive, he and my mom resolved things in an intelligent way. why i thought he didn't love me is beyond me, and one of the reasons i wrote the book is to tell people, many of whom who have had bad experiences with their own dads, often there's no manual. these people is have no better experience, they did the best they could. they did their job, they were the role model. and as long as the old man is above the ground, you can still reach out and perhaps repair the relationship, which is what i did. there's one other wrinkle in the book. i was living in cleveland, i met my uncle. my uncle happened to be a man who lived with my dad before my dad met my mother, none of which i knew. so imagine growing up with a man who had no friends. it was never for my dad, it was always for my mom, and fast forward to meeting a man who

knew my dad before he met my mother? he said, i lived with him, i know him better than you do. either he's changed, which i doubt, or you've misjudged him. so that is what gave me the incentive to sit down with him. i can't say i had this epiphany and i figured there was going to be a wonderful rapprochement with my dad, but i figured i'd tell him off, and at least we would understand respective positions. but it was luck. so i want people to know don't rely on some chance end counter. if he's still around, maybe just you completely misread the old man? and until you resolve your relationship with your father, there's going to be something that will be missing. i felt kinder, happier, lighter when i reconciled with my father. it made everything better x there's always going to be an itch that needs tobe