The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [515]
14. Although its return on revenues was low, the firm by then was consistently profitable and would remain so, with the exception of a couple of months.
15. By the end of 1932, Howard Buffett was averaging 40–50% more in commissions than in 1931, based on financial statements of Buffett, Sklenicka & Co.
16. Charles Lindbergh Jr., “The Little Eaglet,” was kidnapped on March 1, 1932. His body was found on May 12, 1932. Many parents in the 1920s and 1930s were preoccupied with kidnapping, a fear that actually began with the Leopold and Loeb case in 1924 but peaked with the Lindbergh baby. An Omaha country-club groundskeeper claimed he was kidnapped and robbed of $7. In Dallas a minister faked his own kidnapping, trussing himself to his church’s electric fan (Omaha World-Herald, August 4, 1931, and June 20, 1931).
17. According to Roberta Buffett Bialek, Howard once had rheumatic fever, which may have weakened his heart.
18. Interview with Doris Buffett.
19. Interview with Doris Buffett. Warren also remembers this.
20. Interview with Roberta Buffett Bialek.
21. Interviews with Jack Frost, Norma Thurston-Perna, Stu Erikson, Lou Battistone.
22. The correct clinical term for Leila’s condition is unknown, but it may have boiled down to a literal pain in the neck: occipital neuralgia, a chronic pain disorder caused by irritation or injury to the occipital nerve, which is located in the back of the scalp. This disorder causes throbbing, migrainelike pain, which originates at the nape of the neck and spreads up and around the forehead and scalp. Occipital neuralgia can result from physical stress, trauma, or repeated contraction of the neck muscles.
23. Interview with Katie Buffett. This may have been while pregnant with either Warren or Bertie.
24. Interview with Katie Buffett.
25. “Beer Is Back! Omaha to Have Belated Party,” Omaha World-Herald, August 9, 1933; “Nebraska Would Have Voted Down Ten Commandments, Dry Head Says,” Omaha World-Herald, November 15, 1944; “Roosevelt Issues Plea for Repeal of Prohibition,” Associated Press, July 8, 1933, as printed in Omaha World-Herald.
26. U.S. and Nebraska Division of Agricultural Statistics, Nebraska Agricultural Statistics, Historical Record 1866–1954. Lincoln: Government Printing Office, 1957; Almanac for Nebraskans 1939, The Federal Writers’ Project Works Progress Administration, State of Nebraska; Clinton Warne, “Some Effects of the Introduction of the Automobile on Highways and Land Values in Nebraska,” Nebraska History quarterly, The Nebraska State Historical Society, Vol. 38, Number 1, March 1957, page 4.
27. In Kansas, a banker sent to foreclose on a farm turned up dead, shot full of .22-and .38-caliber bullets and dragged by his own car. “Forecloser on Farm Found Fatally Shot,” Omaha World-Herald, January 31, 1933. See also “‘Nickel Bidders’ Halted by Use of Injunctions,” Omaha World-Herald, January 27, 1933; “Tax Sales Blocked by 300 Farmers in Council Bluffs,” Omaha World-Herald, February 27, 1933; “Penny Sale Turned into Real Auction,” Omaha World-Herald, March 12, 1933; “Neighbors Bid $8.05 at Sale When Man with Son, Ill, Asks Note Money,” Omaha World-Herald, January 28, 1933, for examples of the mortgage crisis.
28. “The Dust Storm of November 12 and 13, 1933,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, February 1934; “60 Miles an Hour in Iowa,” special to the New York Times, November 13, 1933; Waudemar Kaempffert, “The Week in Science: Storms of Dust,” New York Times, November 19,1933.
29. Also cited from Leila’s memoirs in Roger Lowenstein’s Buffett.
30. From the Almanac for Nebraskans 1939. Sponsored by the Nebraska State Historical Society, which also contained some tall tales such as the idea of scouring pots by holding them up to a keyhole.
31. “Hot Weather and the Drought of 1934,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, June–July 1934.
32. Grasshoppers are the informal state mascot; Nebraska terms itself the “Bugeater State.” Long before the