The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [131]
On their first date he warned her, “I’m didactic.” The thought of a man infected by the urge to preach failed to put Nancy off, which augured well for their relationship. They started taking their children on outings. At first Teddy went along with them, but he soon became too ill. Later, thirty-one-year-old Charlie spent much of his son’s final weeks sitting by Teddy’s bedside. By the time Teddy died in 1955 at age nine, Charlie had lost between ten and fifteen pounds. “I can’t imagine any experience in life worse than losing a child inch by inch,” he said later.18
Charlie married Nancy Borthwick in January 1956. She quickly became his ballast. He desperately needed someone to arrange his life. Nancy had moxie, pricking Charlie’s balloon without hesitation when it inflated with too much hot air. She was an excellent manager, observant, calm, reasonable, and practical. Nancy curbed his caprices when Charlie took off on occasional bolts of impulsiveness. In time, they added three sons and a daughter to his two girls and her two boys. She set about raising eight children while keeping house and taking care of Charlie.19 He became known to his children as a “book with legs,” constantly studying science and the achievements of great men. Meanwhile, he continued seeking his fortune at the law firm of Musick, Peeler & Garrett, but realized that the law would not make him rich. He began to develop some profitable sidelines. “Charlie, as a very young lawyer, was probably getting $20 an hour. He thought to himself, ‘Who’s my most valuable client?’ And he decided it was himself. So he decided to sell himself an hour each day. He did it early in the morning, working on these construction projects and real estate deals. Everybody should do this, be the client, and then work for other people, too, and sell yourself an hour a day.”
“I had a considerable passion to get rich,” Munger said. “Not because I wanted Ferraris—I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it. I thought it was undignified to have to send invoices to other people. I don’t know where I got that notion from, but I had it.”20 He saw himself as the gentleman squire. Money wasn’t a competition to him. He wanted to join the right clubs but he didn’t care whether the other members were richer than him. Beneath the surface arrogance, his deep respect for authentic achievement gave him a genuine humility that would be crucial in forming a relationship with the man he was about to meet.
That man who sat across from him in a private room of the Omaha Club and started to talk was dressed like a youngish salesman come to sell insurance to the gentleman squire. The worldly Munger by now was well ensconced in Los Angeles business and society, and looked the part. As soon as the Davises and Seemans had made the introductions, however, the two fell into a tête-à-tête. Charlie allowed that he had actually “slaved” a short stint at the Buffett grocery store, where “you were just goddamn busy from the first hour of morning until night.”21 Ernest had let the sons of favored customers like Toody Munger loaf, however, at least compared to the rest of the beleaguered clerks.22 After the pleasantries, the conversation picked up speed and the rest of the party listened, rapt, as Warren began to talk about investing and Ben Graham. Charlie grasped the concepts right away. “He had spent plenty of time thinking about investing and business by then,” Buffett says.
He told Charlie the story of National American insurance. Munger had gone to Central High with Howard and Hayden Ahmanson. He was amazed that someone like Buffett, who was not from California, could know so much about the Ahmansons and their savings and loan. Before long, the two men were talking simultaneously,