Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein

Chapter 1
OMAHA
Like a diamond set in emerald, gracing the west bank of the Missouri
River, lies Omaha, the wonder city of the West and marvel of enterprise,
ability, and progressiveness.
TELEPHONE COMPANY PROMOTION, 1900

Almost from the day that Dr. Pollard awakened him to the world,
six pounds strong and five weeks early, Warren Buffett had a thirst
for numbers. As a boy, he and his friend Bob Russell would pass an
afternoon on the Russells’ front porch, which overlooked a busy
intersection, recording the license-plate numbers of passing cars.
When the sky darkened, they would go inside and spread open the
Omaha World-Herald, counting how often each letter appeared and
filling entire scrapbooks with progressions of numbers, as though
they held the key to some Euclidean riddle. Often, Russell would
reach for the almanac and read out a list of cities. One by one,
Warren would spit back the populations. “I’d say a city, he’d hit it
on the nose,” Russell would recall, half a century later. “I might say,
‘Davenport, Iowa; Topeka, Kansas; Akron, Ohio.’ If I gave him ten
cities, he’d hit every one.” Baseball scores, horse-racing odds—every
numeral was fodder for that precocious memory. Combed, scrubbed,
and stuffed into a pew of Dundee Presbyterian Church, Warren
would pass the time on Sundays calculating the life spans of
ecclesiastical composers. He would stand in the living room with a
paddle and ball, counting, counting by the hour. He would play
Monopoly for what seemed forever—counting his imagined riches.
Blue-eyed, with a fair complexion and pink cheeks, Warren was
intrigued not merely with numbers, but with money. His first
possession was a nickel-coated money changer, given to him by his
Aunt Alice at Christmas and thereafter proudly strapped to his belt.
When he was five, he set up a gum stand on his family’s sidewalk
and sold Chiclets to passersby. After that, he sold lemonade—not on
the Buffetts’ quiet street, but in front of the Russells’ house, where
the traffic was heavier.
At nine, Warren and “Russ” would count the bottle caps from the
soda machine at the gas station across from the Russells’ house. This
was not idle counting, but a primitive market survey. How many
Orange Crush caps? How many Cokes and root beers? The boys
would cart the caps in a wagon and store them in Warren’s
basement, piles of them. The idea was, which brand had the highest
sales? Which was the best business?
At an age when few children knew what a business was, Warren
would get rolls of ticker tape from his stockbroker father, set them
on the floor, and decipher the ticker symbols from his father’s
Standard & Poor’s. He would search the local golf course for used
but marketable golf balls. He would go to Ak-Sar-Ben* racetrack and
scour the saw-dusted floors, turning over torn and discarded stubs
and often finding a winning ticket that had been erroneously thrown
away. In the sweltering Nebraska summers, Warren and Russ would
carry golf clubs for the rich gentlemen at the Omaha Country Club
and earn $3 for the day. And at dusk, as they rocked on the Russells’
front-porch glider in the stillness of the Midwestern twilight, the
parade of Nashes and Stude-bakers and the clanging of the trolley
car would put a thought in Warren’s mind. All of that traffic with no
place to go but right by the Russells’ house, he would say—if only
there were a way to make some money off it. Russell’s mom, Evelyn,

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein