The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [483]
The convention center had many of the elements of a carnival; a GEICO gecko waved at passersby next to a NASCAR race car. A character dressed as a foam Acme brick hooked up with a foam ice-cream-cone character. A rodeo clown stalked the floor on stilts among the air compressors and boat anchor winches. At the south end of the exhibition hall, rising above the crowd, just as Buffett had pictured it, stood a full-size Clayton Home, clad in beige siding with a tidy front porch, sand-colored shutters, and a real grass lawn and brick foundation bedecked with shrubs. And just as he had foreseen, a queue snaked back and forth behind a zigzag rope, as if it were Space Mountain at Disneyland.9
But it was the Fruit of the Loom booth that epitomized Berkshiredom. The Fruit of the Loom booth never had to hand out key chains or free playing cards. People stood waiting in long lines to buy a five-dollar pack of men’s briefs and have their picture taken with the guys wearing grape and apple suits. By the end of the day, nearly every pack of underwear would be sold.
The black-and-white See’s Candies store, conveniently positioned in the middle of the exhibition hall, also had jammed aisles—so jammed that it ran out of lollipops, salted nuts, and peanut brittle in less than three hours. Many of the customers did not bother to pay. Those taking the five-finger discount hooked huge amounts of candy as well as dozens of pairs of shoes from the shoe store, while, above their heads, Buffett and Munger talked about honesty and the ethical way of life.
As yet unaware of the thievery taking place beneath their feet that might force them to consider installing a Berkyville jail by the bookstore next year, Buffett and Munger ambled on, answering questions and chomping on sweets as they talked their way through the entire six hours.
Any normal person would be exhausted after putting on a six-hour live, unscripted performance, but when the meeting ended, Buffett and Munger went upstairs to a large room and parked themselves at a desk, signing autographs so that shareholders who had come from foreign countries could get closer to them. This was a recent idea of Buffett’s. Munger sat through it patiently, but he was getting tired and sometimes talked with bemusement of this circus that Warren had created. He, too, enjoyed being worshipped, but never would have gone to the trouble to stage-manage and encourage it, the way his partner did.
Susie had left to go lie down after the first couple hours of the meeting. She skipped the Sunday brunch, but flew to New York with Warren on Monday. She stayed in bed in her hotel room until one in the afternoon, mashing up pills in room-service ice cream. Susie Jr. watched over her to make sure she didn’t get trapped into overextending herself. She wanted her mother to limit her outings to one thing a day—one visitor, one shopping trip, one fifteen-minute visit to the hotel lobby.10
Susie did attend the traditional dinner party that Sandy and Ruth Gottesman held in their honor every year. Since the mid-1990s, this had become the one time that many of the people in the Buffett Group could count on seeing their old friends during the annual New York trip. Now Susie Jr. said to Ruth Gottesman, “She’s going to try to do more than she should. She’s going to say she’s fine. She’s going to lie to you,” and she asked for help in protecting her mother. Most of those who gathered at the Gottesmans’ had not seen Susie at all during the past year, except perhaps at the shareholder meeting, and then only briefly. She sat in one room and Warren in another, while people came in to greet them and chat. Many people would later recall the event as emotional. Susie declared that she was glad she had gone. But afterward, she was exhausted.
Warren also wanted her to do an interview with public-television talk-show host Charlie Rose. Susie said many sentimental and flattering