The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [145]
Peter, who was naturally quiet, felt rewarded for staying in the background as his siblings ruled through squabbles, with bossy Little Susie striving to contain Howie’s whirlwind.10 Placid by nature, Peter retreated inside his head when the energy around him grew too intense. He played “Yankee Doodle” on the piano in a minor key whenever he was unhappy, rather than express his feelings in words.11
Warren approved of his wife’s sprawling interests, was proud of her generosity and her leadership role in Omaha, and appreciated her attentiveness to the children, which freed him to focus on his work. He, too, was always adding one more thing to his list, but unlike her he never overextended himself. When something new came into his life, something else went out. The two exceptions were money and friends.
Thanks to both, by 1963 a number of professional investors had figured out that this Buffett fellow out in Omaha knew what he was doing. Even some who normally would never have heard of Warren Buffett were starting to seek him out. He no longer had to charm, much less prospect; he simply laid down the terms on which he would take people’s money.
Those outside Omaha often knew more about him than his own neighbors. A friend of Little Susie’s was in the family car on the way to the 1964 New York World’s Fair when her parents stopped for gas. They struck up a conversation with the woman at the next pump, who turned out to be the mother’s former high school teacher. The woman was traveling from Elmira, New York, to Omaha, carrying with her $10,000 to invest with Warren Buffett. Do you know him? she asked. Should I invest with him? He’s our neighbor, the family said. Yes, you should. They got back in the car and headed onward to the World’s Fair, thinking no more of it. With five kids and a new house, it didn’t occur to them to invest for themselves.12
Another would-be partner, Laurence Tisch, one of two brothers who were building a New York hotel empire, sent in a check for $30,000 made out to Charlie Munger. Buffett called him and said he was glad to have Tisch join the partnership, but next time, “make the check out to me.”
Munger could have used the money. Whatever Laurence Tisch may have thought, in 1963 he and Buffett were not partners. Munger had just opened a partnership of his own after waiting until he had accumulated a fair amount of money—around $300,000—by investing in real estate. But this was peanuts by Buffett’s standards, a fraction of Warren and Susie’s wealth.
“Charlie had a lot of children early on. That hindered him a lot in getting independent. Starting early with no encumbrances is a big advantage. Even when I came back from Graham-Newman, I mean, I had my 174,000 bucks, I felt like I could do what I wanted to do. I could take courses with my father-in-law the psychologist. I could go out there to the university and sit in the library and read all day.”
In fact, Buffett had been encouraging Munger to think seriously about investing as a career ever since they first met. He would say to him, It’s nice to be a lawyer and to do real estate on the side, but if you want to make some real money, you ought to start something like my partnerships.13 In 1962, Munger had gone into partnership with his poker buddy Jack Wheeler. Wheeler was a trader on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, the Wild West version in miniature of what was going on back east: a floor full of screaming traders, aggressive men looking to make a killing the fastest way they could. He owned an investing partnership, Wheeler, Cruttenden & Company, which included two “specialist posts” on the