The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [376]
Buffett, who didn’t really care about his surroundings, was a good sport about this sort of thing. Greenfield had stocked his room with Cherry Coke, See’s Candies, and honey-roasted peanuts to make him more comfortable. The bathroom he was supposed to use, however, had a sign in it that said, “No TP.” Baffled, he enlisted Graham and Greenfield, who had accompanied him to the bed-and-breakfast, as interpreters, since no one was around to explain. Neither of them could figure out what “No TP” meant either. They decided that there was probably something wrong with the plumbing. The facilities at Greenfield’s house were too far away for Buffett to use except when he was visiting during the day. Greenfield pointed out a bathroom at the gas station nearby and suggested this alternative.
Buffett sat in his room that evening, eating his honey-roasted peanuts and drinking his Cherry Coke. Memories differ as to whether he visited the gas-station facilities in the small hours, only to find that the door was locked.5 Either way, the next morning, at Greenfield’s house, all of them puzzled again over what “No TP” meant.
After breakfast, Greenfield shepherded her guests into town to stand at the roadside among a small crowd of people sprawled in lawn chairs for the Fourth of July parade. Uncle Sam in a blue tailcoat and Stars and Stripes top hat oversaw a little brass band; fire trucks, an ambulance, and antique cars idled by; dogs trotted past in homemade costumes, led by their couturiers; high-kicking high school cheerleaders preceded a troupe of dozens who struggled to control a giant U.S. flag hoisted overhead. Another antique car or two rolled by, then a group of people dressed as strawberries, followed by the Kiwanis Citizen of the Year. Afterward, Greenfield held her annual garden party, at which guests in summery dresses and sport coats and ties played a vicious croquet match before the vivid backdrop of flowers rising from the lawn to her house.
The following morning, Buffett pulled on a cardigan and arranged his wayward hair into a neat gray comb-over. Greenfield crammed all five of them into her little car for the ninety-minute drive to the Gates compound. “While we’re driving down there, I said, ‘What the hell are we going to spend all day doing with these people? How long do we have to stay to be polite?’”
Gates had similar feelings. “I had a constant dialogue with my mom,” he says, “which was, Why don’t you come to the family dinner? No, Mom, I’m too busy, I’m working. So she told me Katharine Graham was coming, and Warren Buffett.” He was interested in meeting Graham, now a seventy-four-year-old legend who had softened into an older but still patrician—and imperious—figure, like a witty version of Queen Elizabeth, but, “I told my mom, ‘I don’t know about a guy who just invests money and picks stocks. I don’t have many good questions for him; that’s not my thing, Mom.’ But she insisted.” Gates flew in on a helicopter so he could make a quick getaway. When a tiny car pulled into the driveway, he was surprised to see a group of famous people—Greenfield and her guests—pop out like a gang of circus clowns.6
Graham was taken over to meet Gates, who looked like a recent college graduate, in a red sweatshirt over a golf shirt, his collar turned up in a little saucer around his neck. While Gates was arranging for Graham to take a seaplane ride, Buffett was introduced to Bill Gates Sr. and his wife, Mary.7 Then Bill III, known as Trey, was brought round to meet Buffett.
Observers kept a weather eye on this introduction. Gates