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The townspeople launched a crusade to foil Buffett by raising nearly $3 million to keep the ownership in Beatrice.18 Day by day the Beatrice Daily Sun breathlessly counted down to the deadline as the town fought to save its only factory. The day of the deadline, fire sirens sounded and bells rang out as the mayor stepped to a microphone and announced that Buffett had been defeated; Charles B. Dempster, grandson of the company’s founder, headed an investor group that pledged to keep the plant open.19 Cash in hand, Buffett handed out more than $2 million to his shareholders.20 But the experience scarred him. Instead of becoming toughened against animosity, he vowed never to let it happen again. He couldn’t take a whole town hating him.

One day not long after, Buffett called Walter Schloss, saying, “You know, Walter, I have these small positions in five different companies, and I’ll sell them to you.” These were Jeddo-Highland Coal, Merchants National Property, Vermont Marble, Genesee & Wyoming Railroad, and another whose name is lost in time. “Well, what price would you want, Warren?” Schloss asked. “I’ll sell them to you at the price that I’m carrying them at,” Buffett said. “Okay, I’ll buy them from you,” said Schloss immediately.

“I didn’t say, ‘Well, you know, you have to look up each one and check what it’s worth,’” Schloss says. “I trusted Warren. If I had said, ‘Well, I can buy it for ninety percent of what you’re carrying it at,’ Warren would have said—‘Forget it!’ I did him a favor, so he wanted to do me one too. If he had also made a profit, then that was fine. And they all worked out brilliantly. I felt that it was his way of saying thank you for selling me your Dempster stock. I don’t say that’s the reason, but that’s what I mean by being an honest guy.”

26

Haystacks of Gold

Omaha and California • 1963–1964

Warren may have said he wanted to become a millionaire, but he never said that he would stop there. Later he would describe himself during this period as “a lousy sport at doing anything I didn’t want to do.” What he wanted to do was invest. His children now ranged from five to ten years old, and one friend described Susie as “sort of a single mother.” Warren would show up at school events or toss around a football if asked, but he never initiated a game. He seemed too preoccupied to notice his children’s longing for attention. Susie taught the children that his special mission must be respected; she told them, “He can only be so much, so don’t expect any more from him.” That applied to her, too; Warren was obviously devoted to his wife, and showed that in public, caressing “Susan-o” affectionately and recounting tender, funny variations of how she, the gentle angel, had stooped to marry him, the ukulele-playing financial prodigy who was a secret wreck. At the same time he was so used to her attention and remained so undomesticated that once, when she was nauseous and asked him to bring her a basin, he came back with a colander. She pointed out the holes; he rattled around in the kitchen and returned triumphantly bearing the colander on a cookie sheet. After that, she knew it was hopeless.

Yet the predictability of Warren’s habits gave a certain stability to the Buffett household, as Susie’s come-on-in, take-a-number atmosphere unfolded around them. In the evenings he reenacted his own father’s routine, arriving at the same time every night, slamming the door from the garage, and yelling, “I’m home!” before heading to the living room to read the newspaper. He wasn’t uncaring, and he was often available. But in conversation his words often had a subtly prepared, even rehearsed quality. He was always one step ahead. Whatever went on inside his mind took place between the lines; it came through in the silences, the flashes of wit, the tremulous flight from certain topics of conversation. His feelings danced behind so many veils that even he seemed unaware of them most of the time.