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By Root 3147 0

the trio of Buffett, Munger, and Guerin joined the board, Buffett threw himself into the candy business with an enthusiasm he had never displayed with companies like Dempster and Berkshire Hathaway, where he had appointed proxies. He sent boxes of See’s to his fellow Grahamites. Within days, he wrote a detailed letter to Chuck Huggins, executive vice president, explaining that he had been talking to shopping-center owners around the country about opening new See’s stores in locations like Colorado Springs, Fayetteville, and Galveston. He suggested that Huggins avoid Iowa, because the shopping-center executives had told him that “Iowans are generally not candy enthusiasts.”31 He gave Huggins permission to stop sending monthly boxes of candy to the long list of women whom Candy Harry had designated as his special friends. He started following sugar futures and cocoa futures, which at 58 cents a pound were approaching prices unheard of since the year of the Rockwood cocoa caper.32

Buffett suggested experimenting with prepackaged candy. He wanted to see results, budgets, and lots and lots of financial information. He wrote Huggins about a store in Las Vegas: “It’s interesting how many more dollars we can take out of a community when we get the right sort of location. You are doing a first-class job of extending our ring of preeminence.” Buffett suggested that Huggins “play around with” advertising slogans and try to come up with one along the lines of Coca-Cola’s “pause that refreshes,” or the “Rocky Mountain spring water” of Coors beer.33 It was as if, over his breakfast cornflakes, Huggins could dream up an advertising slogan as compelling as Coca-Cola’s.34 One longtime employee described Buffett’s Dale Carnegie management style this way: “He’d always praise you while he gave you more to do.”35

As the bar subtly rose an inch or two with each new accomplishment, and the hurdler was reassured that he could surely leap to ever-higher heights, the effect was like a tiny stream of water: Its gentle, unrelenting pressure felt wonderful until it finally drove its recipient mad. Thus, when Buffett’s attention broke, as it inevitably did, it could seem like a relief. Deceived by the initial gush of enthusiasm, Huggins signed up Buffett for several candy-industry trade magazines. Eventually, Buffett, turning his attention to some newer interest, asked for a cease-and-desist. “Charlie may have visions of becoming a candymaker someday,” he wrote, “but I will continue to just read the statements.”36 He had discovered that he liked owning a candy company, not running one.

It was much the same at home. Buffett would tell someone with great sincerity, “Please come visit, I really want to see you,” then bury his head in a newspaper when they arrived, apparently satisfied with their presence. But there was also the odd chance that he wanted to talk and talk, and they might go away exhausted. Susie had seen his enthusiasms come and go.

Warren was still besotted with his wife, praised her constantly in public, and cuddled her on his lap. But at home, as always, he withdrew into his private pursuits and wanted to be taken care of. Susie referred to him as an “iceberg” to one of her friends. However, nothing had really changed in their relationship since the beginning—except her feelings. He was content. He reasoned that because she loved to give, by receiving he served her. Based on their past and her behavior with people in general, and with him in particular, there was no reason for him to think otherwise. But Susie’s own desires were changing. She, the emotional vending machine, was now taking care of many more people than Warren alone; recently she had watched over Alice Buffett as she succumbed after a painful battle with cancer. Yet this time, Susie was developing a yearning to be taken care of herself.

Thus, while her husband pursued his new businesses away from Omaha or sat sunk in thought in his office, Susie spent less and less time at home, going to lunch, to dinner, or to jazz clubs in the evening with friends, and traveling more