Chapter 4 2 run away

The Buffetts moved again to a four-bedroom house in Hot Springs Canyon, on Forty-ninth Street NW outside Washington.The house is made of whitewashed brick and has an open porch in the front and a ramped driveway to the back.It was the typical room of a modest young MP--Richard.The Nixons were their neighbors—just a few steps down Massachusetts Avenue.Behind the house is a stretch of woods. Warren's new life revolved around his job at The Washington Post.Now that he's turned 13, he registers his income and files his tax returns -- a tax he's determined his father won't pay. But, outside of his newspaper job, Warren wasn't happy at all.When Alice was in junior high school, he caused a lot of trouble for the teacher, and his academic performance was mediocre.Because he was considered young in the class and skipped a grade, he always wore glasses and stayed out of the mainstream of society.He was always slovenly, and even the headmaster reminded Lila that it was time to give him a good grooming.

In June of that first unhappy year, Warren fled—his first real rebellion.He and Roger, the son of a Missouri congressman.Bell and a good friend hitchhiked to Hershey, Pennsylvania.Warren knew of a golf course there and figured they could caddie there for a few days.But for the first time - the economy is no longer his motivation.stay with family all day Together, being in the goddamn place in Washington was driving him nuts—all of it was driving him nuts. The children arrived at their destination at nightfall, without even a toothbrush, and settled in a room in a new district tavern.Early in the morning, they were stopped by the police before they could go out.

Bell is not tall, while Warren and the other boy are nearly 6 feet tall.From a distance, Bell looked very young—the police feared he was a kidnapping victim—and the three were caught and questioned.Who could have imagined that Warren, a 14-year-old kid, slickly pleaded their innocence to the police, but said nothing about what they did.The police finally let them go, but they were like deflated balls, so they got a ride home that same day. It seemed Warren hadn't given up on continuing his half-hearted rebellion.He suddenly worked hard at school and seemed very tame.To quote his sister Roberta, "rebel" was "a word too heavy" for him.

But Howard and Lila were appalled, and though they had been kind to Warren upon his return to Washington, Howard was determined to stop his defiance early on.He told Warren that he had to improve his grades or quit his paper delivery job. That sentence seemed like a tonic for Warren's grades.Not only did he not give up, but his newspaper delivery route expanded a lot.He quickly got a route from the Herald Times, a rival morning newspaper to the Post, that covered the exact same area Warren had sent the Post.As Buffett later recalled, if a subscriber canceled one newspaper and subscribed to another, "the next day I'd be glowing." A newspaper is to be delivered.Lila got up in the morning to make him breakfast, and Warren was out of the house by five twenty to catch the bus for Massachusetts Avenue.Occasionally when he fell ill, Lila delivered the papers for him, but she never went near the money he earned.Lila wrote: "His savings are his everything, you don't dare to touch the drawer where he puts money, every penny must stay there."

Warren sees the crown jewel of the Westchester Apartments, an eight-story, pointed red-brick complex on Church Street.He quickly established a line worthy of a young Henry.The "assembly line" that Ford borrowed from.He always put half of the newspapers in each building on the eighth floor elevator landing, and the other half on the fourth floor.Then he walked between the buildings, putting newspapers in front of each door, floor by floor.On the day of the charge, he would leave an envelope at the front desk so he wouldn't have to go door-to-door to collect it. When the Buffetts returned to Omaha for the summer, Warren entrusted his newspaper delivery to a friend: Walter.Dill, then show him how to do it.Dill remembers: "You had such a big stack of newspapers in front of you—it was like a mountain. But it only took you about an hour and a quarter of an hour.

It's really a great route, all the buildings are connected underground, you don't have to go out at all. " Warren also peddled magazines from the apartment, figuring he could boost profits by adding a product line.The secret here is to ask for subscriptions at the right time.Buffett recalls that some of his customers "always left their magazines on the stairs. You could tell them when their subscription was up by tearing off the address label. That way, I knew exactly what everyone's subscription was up to." Despite the fact that the apartment was considered a very dignified place - Warren had met Jacqueline in the elevator.Bouvier -- he's still going to have the problem of repudiation.In wartime Washington, people moved in and out so frequently that they sometimes forgot to pay him.So Warren struck a deal with the elevator girls, who would get free newspapers and tip Warren off if someone moved out.

Simply put, Warren has made his paper route a big business.he earns every month to $175 -- that's what many young people earn full-time -- and save every dime.In 1945, when he was just 14, he took $1,200 of his profits and invested it in a 40-acre farm in Nebraska. For Warren's years in Washington, the evils of World War II were truly pervasive. Bonds of all kinds were peddled in schools, and blackout curtains hung in homes.However, the war had hardly any direct impact on him.The only exception was in August 1945, when the Buffetts were summering in Omaha.Warren hears about Hiroshima, him and neighbor Jerry.Moore had a heated discussion about the atomic bomb.Warren was very concerned about that, Moore recalls.He looks at it with an unwavering, frightening logic, as he looks at religion. “We were talking — and I can see it vividly — on the lawn in front of my house. He was terrified of the chain reaction, . . . terrified of what it might do to the world.”

Back in Washington, Warren was at Woodrow.The Wilson family adjusted somewhat better.His paper delivery route allowed him to shake off his homesickness.He also started to make a bunch of new friends, just like in Omaha.He organized a team to collect golf balls, was a pretty good golfer himself, and joined the school team. Robert.Dwyer was the golf coach and another role model for Warren.Dwyer found Warren interesting—enthusiastic but not reckless.He took Warren to the tracker and taught him how to read the daily game sheet.The summer after Warren finished his freshman year, Dwyer and Warren happened to go golfing at the A-lister competition.It started to rain, so they got in Dwyer's car and turned on the radio to listen to the game.New Yorkers - Baseball slugger Charlie.Keller won."If you give me 20-1, I bet he hit a home run," Dwyer said.

Warren said: "I bet a dollar." Of course, Keller hit a home run, and Dwyer lost $20 in another bet. What both of them are well aware of, however, is that Warren makes more money than his coach.When Warren could barely shave, he was running around in this strange city, trying to get his career off the ground.He devoured every business book he could get his hands on, pored over insurance statements, and labored over his paper routes.Donald.Danley, who was also a student of Wilson and later became a good friend of Warren, believed that Warren was "planning a path to reach his (financial) goals."

Danley, the son of a lawyer in the Justice Department, was a serious and bright student.At first glance, he and Warren had little in common.Danley has a beautiful girlfriend, while Warren has never dated.And Danley was primarily interested in science.But Danley, who lost his mother, stayed at Buffett's home for most of the postwar period, when Danley's father went to Japan to prosecute war criminals.The two kids played music together, with Warren strumming on the ukulele and Danley playing the piano.Later, they both discovered that Danley, who loves science, and Warren, who is interested in business, share a common language-numbers.Together they would calculate the odds of winning or losing a few hands of poker, or in a room of several people, the odds of two people having the same birthday.Or Danley rattles off a bunch of double digits and waits for Warren to blurt out the sum of them.

During their senior year, Danley bought an old pinball machine for $25, and Warren played with him all day.The machines often broke down, so Danley fixed them, and Warren came to admire his friend's mechanical skills.Then Warren had an idea: Why not put the machine in the barbershop on Wisconley Avenue and rent it out? Warren found the barber, and the two struck a 50-50 split.On the first day they used the machine to earn 14 yuan.Within about a month, Warren and Danley had pinball machines set up in three barbershops.Business was so hot they expanded to 7 more, Warren - as if living a real life fantasy Medium - came up with a name: Wilson Slot Machine Company. "Later, we were making $50 a week," "I never dreamed that life would be this good," he recalls. Wilson Slots has a natural division of labor.Warren raises major funds for the machines, and second-hand arcades can cost anywhere from $25 to $75 each.Danley fixes them, and Warren keeps the books and prints out the monthly financial statements.If the machine broke down, the barbers called Danley right away—it always did—and the two showed up immediately in Danley's 1938 Buick with the backseat removed. Worried that the pinball business would be taken over by hooligans, Warren insisted on a small, off-road location.At the same time he and Danley always hinted that they were nothing more than errand runners for a business not to be taken lightly.Buffett recalled: The owner of the barber shop is always pushing us to get a new machine, and we just tell them we have to discuss it with the boss.We pretend we're nothing more than guys hired to move machines and count money. They make weekly rounds, sometimes bringing Danley's girlfriend, Normar, with them.Let.Thurston. Warren would always get back in the car and relish describing the barber, or something he said, and the three of them would laugh wildly.Warren will see all kinds of new tricks -- make fun of these people who play the role of great big businessmen. Normar.Jean found Warren particularly interesting.She is beautiful and slender, with arched eyebrows and stunning blonde hair.Her nickname was "Peroxide," Danley "Duck," and Warren simply "Buffett."People older than them have fought in wars, while Buffett, Duck and "Peroxide" are still in their naive age.Although they were amateurs by nature, they never smoked or said harsh words, and Warren didn't drink anything but Pepsi.Normar.All the girls Jean knew were virgins, and there was very little sexuality in her circle.Warren, on the other hand, is more innocent. He doesn't even go to the Friday night dance. "He's not as active as other kids," Normar said.Jean said, "He doesn't try at all." He walked with his shoulders forward, his body arched toward the ground, and he shuffled like a billy goat.He always carried that stupid-looking purse on his belt.To his Wilson classmates, Warren wore shoes that marked him as a redneck.Years later they still vividly remember, "We always threw Warren and his sneakers out." Esper.Heindel remembers, "He always wore it, well, year-round, and I wouldn't worry if the snow was a foot thick, and he was wearing sneakers!" And Robert."I remember very well that we only made fun of him about one thing -- he never wore anything other than tennis shoes, even in the dead of winter," Moore said. Warren seems to have always had a soft spot for these sneakers. "Most of us try to look like everyone else," Normar said.“Girls are wearing sweaters that button up the back, and I think he likes to be different,” says Jean, though he’s feisty and perpetually mischievous and cracking jokes.There is always something about him that is different from ordinary people.When his erratic behavior was pointed out, he was always stubborn or self-deprecating.Normar.Jean said, "He was who he was and never wanted to be like anyone else." At the family dinner table, Warren delivered opinionated tirade every night.Although Howard had promised only one term, he was re-elected in 1994 and 1946.He served in a Congress that had nothing to do because it was always against Truman.Every night, he would tell his family about scary things.Once, when the family was discussing what to get Howard's lieutenant for Christmas, Roberta Jr. popped up: "What about savings bonds—does he know they're not doing well?" Another time, after voting against a labor bill, Howard took Warren to a softball game in Omaha.When the congressman was introduced to the public, he was rudely mocked, but he appeared nonchalant in front of Warren. Howard's unshakable ethics led him not only to refuse invitations to banquets, but even to accept a portion of his own rewards.During his first term, when congressional salaries rose from $10,000 to $12,500, Howard put the increased money back into the payroll office on Capitol Hill, insisting that he was elected on a low salary. Lila says her husband only thinks about one thing when he votes on a bill, "Does this increase people's freedom, or does it reduce people's freedom?" But his view of that freedom is clearly narrow.His only interest was in reducing the government apparatus expanded by Roosevelt and World War II to its original size. During the war he co-authored a letter demanding that the United States do more to force Germany to surrender unconditionally, while also asking the question of doubt: "Why are we fighting?" Didn't the demise of the Nazis confer "a supplement to human liberty?" After the war he voted against bombarded Britain, against school lunches, against European rice exports, and against Breton.Wood monetary system.At its worst, his Americanism veered into an attitude of xenophobia and the persecution of others under the charge of "redism."When the Buffetts drove past the still-lit British embassy at night, Howard would growl, "They're up all night trying to squeeze money out of us." He objected to the Marshall Plan's proposals to rebuild Western Europe and Call it "managing the bottomless pit", perhaps with Stalin's secret support. Howard was quite prescient on many issues, and one of his proposals was to take steps to protect holders of US savings bonds from inflation.His tenure is thus broadly that of a moralist distorted by parochialism and extremism. Warren echoed his father's political views, perhaps believing them on the surface, but he never participated in them himself.He absorbed his father's patriotic aspects but not his fierce isolationism.Years later, Warren wrote mildly about his father's dogmatism in letters to college friends."I just had to shut up and go out and help my dad run a crusade against this or that," Warren wrote in the letter. He did inherit a side of his father who was full of concern and concern for society. (Indeed, Warren later denounced the despicable behavior of corporations stealing other people's property in the same way that Howard accused the government.) But for Warren, who witnessed the Great Depression and the war as a child That said, the government is the defender of society, not the enemy.In terms of absolute support for the government, Warren's political awareness, although immature, has revealed an independent background. Warren had long since decided not to follow his father into government.Don Normar.When Jean asked if he wanted to live in Washington, Warren replied without hesitation: "No, I want to live in Omaha." Before he was in his senior year, his plan for his future career was not just in business, but in investing exclusively.While he sat at home eating breakfast, other boys at this age would only pay attention to the sports pages, while he was already poring over the stock charts.Speculations about him being an expert in this field spread to the school, and even the teachers tried their best to dig out some knowledge about stocks from him. He invests his name shrewdly.Warren dumped AT&T stock.Because he knows his teachers own AT&T stock. "They all think I know a lot about stocks, and I'm thinking if I short AT&T, I'm going to make them panic about their pensions." How did this docile child enjoy such a reputation?Warren has never had anything pretty in the stock market However, people feel that he is an expert.There was something inherent about him, not just precocious erudition, but his ability to express knowledge in a logical manner.What moves him is not loyalty, but facts that he can put together coherently and meaningfully.To quote Danley: "He seemed to have extraordinary insight, and the way he talked about a thing gave the impression that he really knew exactly what he was talking about." Warren graduated in 1947, sixteenth in a class of 374 (Danley was first).He was described in Wilson's Almanac as having bright, eager eyes, neatly parted hair, and a gentle smile.The headline reads "Likes math...is a future stockbroker". Howard suggested that he go to the finance and business department of the Wharton School of Business at the nearby University of Pennsylvania, and Warren replied that it would be a waste of youth in that school.He has distributed nearly 600,000 copies of the newspaper and earned more than $5,000 from it.The money came from newspapers, from the Wilson Slot Machine Company, and from a tenant in Nebraska.Plus, he's read no fewer than a hundred books on business.What else does he need to learn? Howard patiently reminded Warren that he turned 17 in two months.In the end, Warren relented. In August, Wilson Slots was sold to a veteran for $1,200, and Warren headed to Wharton with his stock in hand. However, this time Howard was really wrong.Despite Wharton's reputation, its curriculum lacks intensity.Warren wearily said he knew more than the professor.His dissatisfaction—and a precursor to his dissatisfaction with business schools in general—comes from the way they vaguely go to extremes, where his professors have a perfect theory but struggle with how to make a profit ignorant of the practical details that Warren craves. When Warren returned to Omaha, Mary.Falk reminded him not to waste his studies too much.He casually replied, "Mary, all I do is open the book the night before, drink a big bottle of Pepsi, and then I can score 100 on the test." In fact, he spent a great deal of time on the Philadelphia exchange, following the movements of various stocks.But he didn't create a dedicated investment system -- which would be dangerous if he had.He'll study charts, he'll listen to insider tips, but he doesn't have any framework, he's looking. During Warren's freshman year of college, with Charles.Peterson shared the house.Charles was an Omaha native (and later became one of Warren's first investors).Warren soon became acquainted with Harry.Beja, a Mexican who made the same mistake as Warren came to the Northeast campus.Beja was the most serious student on campus, but Warren often joked that he lived with "Indians" in Mexico.the two of them are + Both got A's in Industrial I, but Beja had to notice that he put in far more work than Warren in this class.However, despite Beja's deep displeasure with Warren's easy success, he has to admit that he does like Warren.Beja saw him as his ideal type of American: an honest, approachable, unassuming Midwesterner. ①Warren was from Beja's roommate, a man named Jerry.Another spirit of a similar nature was found in the Brooklynites of Oranse.They met in the weight room, and the broad-shouldered Orlans immediately felt that Warren was a "genius."Like Warren, Orlans had mood swings, and he was so homesick that he spent most of the first year in tears.But he was intelligent with a sharp wit and a warm smile, and Warren and Orlans became close friends. ① Olans, an investor and lifelong follower of Buffett, later suggested that Baird should also invest, but Baird was determined to prove that he could still do well. Beja said later that Orlans called him several times a year to say how rich Warren was and "he was thriving." Before he knew it, Warren was planting the seeds for future investor pools.But at the time, he didn't feel like he had any direction.After a year at Penn, he wanted to come out, but his father insisted he try another year.During the summer in Washington, Warren found a comic avenue for her struggle with the rich — this time with Don again.Danley together.His pinball buddy offered $350 for an old Rolls.Royce.Warren went with Danley to the Baltimore junkyard to get it back, and followed him back to Washington.As soon as they came to the block line, they were stopped by the police.Danley recalled: "We had no license plates, and the taillights were off. The police insisted on issuing a ticket, and Warren said, 'Look, officer, we're going to take it back to the garage at home so we can take care of it. Repaired to meet all safety requirements.' He kept talking and talking until the police said 'OK!'” Danley put the car in the Buffetts' garage, and they spent the summer fixing it up—Danley, of course, crawling under the car, while Warren sat on a stool, reading business stories or reading to his friends. The book they found hilarious - How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. This Rolls.The Royce is a 1928 Touring Car for Ladies.It has a seat in the front, a lot of space in the back, and a handle to decorate the facade.Danley and Normar.Let's paint it dark blue.They rented it out a few times, but really for the sake of being seen, Warren advised them to drive downtown, posing as a wealthy couple and their driver.But he himself was to play the rich nobleman, with Danley acting as the chauffeur.Danley puts on Howard.Buffett in his black coat, then hands on the steering wheel, and Warren, wearing a muskrat coat and tall hat, got sideways and sat in Normall.Let's be beside.When he came to the Times Building, Danley turned off the car and stopped according to the plot.Then he jumped out of the car and fiddled around under the hood, as if trying to figure out what was wrong.When passers-by began to stare at them, Warren, the aristocrat, raised his cane and tapped the windshield, then pointed, as if to point out what was wrong.Danley dawdled a little longer—watched a little longer—and it was “fixed.” But Warren is rarely this suave off-screen.Him and Normar.Jean's cousin Barbara.Wally is dating in the summer, and he takes her to a Billie Holiday show.But while Warren is a lively companion, his endless guessing and "brain" games with Wally take away from the romance - presumably such games don't reveal too much of Warren's stupidity. one side.When he finally worked up the courage to invite Wally to spend the weekend in Pennsylvania, she said no. During his sophomore year in college, Warren lived in Alpha.Sigma's house, a Victorian mansion with a high roof and a majestic spiral staircase, towers over Spruce Avenue.He's ambivalent about his brothers in his fraternity—not too cold, but not too fitted into their formulas.After lunch he would sink into the carved bridge chair by the bay window and play cards or bridge with the others.In conversational settings, such as mealtimes, Warren was very active—always making her point with ease and confidence.Back then, fraternity members wore ties and jackets at meals, and waiters served. Anthony.Vecchio recalled Warren's dinner-table spiel: "He was always funny when he was there -- there was a lot of laughter." He went on: "He was a very funny guy, very smart. It wasn't very popular Welcome burlesque, it's monotonous. He has a slightly cynical attitude about how things work. I remember him saying that if he was rich, he would put a steam toilet seat in the bathroom. He said that would suffice .” But Warren craved some sort of intellectual -- or financial -- stimulation.University of Pennsylvania ① Danley later went to Monsanto as a chemical engineer.After retirement, he bought an American car. It's a good school to cheer everyone around, and campus life in 1948 was all about pep rallies and a top-ten football team.Interestingly, Warren was featured on the cover of a student magazine, Penn Illustrated, and became a fan model, wearing a bowler hat and raccoon coat, waving a flag hat in one hand, and the other Holding a bottle of brandy in one hand to his girlfriend, smiling contentedly and smoking a cigar, in the background of a montage of a Penn convoy in motion and a man wearing a leather helmet The image of the ball carrier. The cover was nothing more than a joke, Warren's friend Cha Tank.Orlans was one of the editors of the magazine. In fact, Warren could look like anything but the boy on the cover.He never drank, was uncomfortable around women, and was not a very social guy.With so many older students on campus—like returning U.S. Army soldiers—Warren even seemed unenlisted. The shaggy-haired 18-year-old looked like a kid visiting. His youthfulness is especially evident sexually.Not only was he inexperienced with women, but he also felt very uncomfortable with the topics that his partners talked about behind closed doors.Vecchio, the son of a Long Island subcontractor, said: "I vividly remember when everyone started talking about sex, he was always staring at the floor and his face was flushed." Come weekend, be the alpha.When Sigma held a beer party, the monastery frat house would be filled with women.Warren doesn't usually date, but he feels perfectly at home even when he's not joining the crowd -- important for a would-be investor.While most of the lads were arming a lady, Warren would liven up the evening by sitting in a chair with a few words about the gold standard.He was so contagious that it was customary for every party to have him stand in the corner of the room and ask him various questions about economics and politics. "He starts talking, and within a minute or two, he's got an audience, maybe 10 or 20 people," Wayne said.Jones, a sober young man who became a Methodist preacher, said, "He's so humble, you pay a lot of attention to what he says. He's always saying, 'I don't really know much about this, but in my opinion……'" Warren's fraternity mates admired his intellect.He recalled that he could read an entire passage and then recite it by rote.In class, when a graduate school lecturer repeated an answer from a text, Warren, who had already memorized it, would blurt out "You forgot the comma."In addition, his peers were fascinated by his eloquent attacks on the faculty.A member of his fraternity, Richard."Warren was right when he concluded that Wharton had nothing to teach him," Kendall said. When the brothers returned to Wharton in the summer of 1949, they were surprised to find Warren missing.Vecchio said: "In the second year he suddenly disappeared. No one heard from him again." In other words, he fled again.His father was defeated in 1948, and the family returned to Omaha, leaving Warren alone in the East.At Wharton, there was nothing to keep him—no newspapers for money, no pinball.He transferred to the familiar University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where his parents met."Nebraska is haunting, and Wharton is boring," Warren explained. "I don't feel like I've learned a lot." Among his alphas.Of the Sigmar brothers, he remembered only one with whom he had played bridge, in an alcove by the large bay window.As for the rest, it's like he's never been there. Since Buffett returned to Nebraska, he was only a student in name.He's actually growing his career.During the summer, he was at Jay.oo.Got a job at JCPenney, Jay.oo.Binny promised him a job when he graduated, but he declined.at home He felt more at ease on the grass, and by this time he had started dating, too.Writing to "Dear Behemoth" (Jerry Orlans), the happy Buffett couldn't hide his joy: The girl I was dating recently mentioned to me occasionally that she plays tennis.So I thought I could impress her by showing her caveman masculinity.So I took the initiative to give her a chance to see how I fought hard on the other end of the net.As a result, she was beaten hard. He planned a grueling task: to take five courses in the fall of 1949 and six in the spring of 1950, mostly in business and economics.But his focus was outside of school, and Buffett took a job delivering newspapers.The job led to "50 little boys calling me 'Mr. Buffett,'" he explained to Orlans.He drove around the Southwest in a 1941 Ford, supervising six rural newsboys for Lincoln Magazine.The job pay was 75 cents an hour.Magazine director Mark.Seacrest was concerned about a student's ability to do the job, but Buffett "managed it just fine."He comes in every week to pick up his homework and gets it done in a flash.For Buffett, this was a lot of work, he recalled: "If you had a route in Seward or Pawnee City or Whippingwater when you were in college, you had to find a kid to do it every day. 15 newspaper jobs or something like that, and you still have to find him in the late afternoon or early evening — it's really an education." In Lincoln, Buffett and Truman.Wood lives together.Wood was then engaged to Warren's sister, Doris, and they lived above a Victorian house on Pippel Street.Buffett came home from his job at the newspaper in the late afternoon, read the Wall Street Journal, and walked into a greasy diner with Wood for a dinner of mashed potatoes, beef, gravy, or something.When Wood thought that Buffett had read the Bible three or four times and still knew very little about it, he couldn't help but want to persuade him to convert to religion.Their usual discussions were about fidelity and the afterlife, but Buffett was unmoved.Buffett always gives a very logical answer to every argument Wood provokes. Aside from small talk, Buffett blew through school in three years, working what was effectively a full-time job while still playing bridge and getting A's. He also mentioned in his letter to Olans in the fall that交了一打参加券，希望能在伯曼。谢弗的歌唱比赛中赢100美元，而且还和一个“看起来各方面都不错的德国女孩”作了一次约会。 冬天的时候，巴菲特又重新操办起他的高尔夫球生意——这次是做一项严肃体面的事业，并任命奥兰斯为他在费城的代理人。到1950年1月时，巴菲特恳请他的朋友着手开始做生意： 我认为回到那儿的男孩还不太常打高尔夫球，因此我保证3月1日你可以开始销售你认准的那种高尔夫球。不要犹豫，该下订单了。 巴菲特许诺对任何“残次品”负责赔偿损失，而且向奥兰斯保证他的高尔夫球质量绝对可靠。但是，他附加了一句，“不要把它们放近任何太热的地方。”巴菲特提到他在期末考中成绩“颇佳”，然后列出了他春季要上的课程。到三四月，沃伦给奥兰斯发了一批货，并以轻松却是中肯的口气提醒他的好友，“巴菲特高尔夫球公司并不是一个慈善企业。” 我想这时候你一定沉浸于出售这些漂亮玩意所获的大笔利润带来的享受之中。这些玩意儿我都错误地寄给了你父亲的合伙人。但是，别忘了只有当你结清一张价值65.94美元 的支票后，林肯才能共享费城的兴盛。 到了夏天，巴菲特继续迈着他危险的步伐，搬回父母身边，同时在奥马哈修3门课以便拿到学分毕业。到7月为止他卖了220打高尔夫球，从中赚了1200美元。把他所有的业绩加起来，他的积蓄达到9800美元。 一点一滴地积攒是巴菲特所挣的每一元钱的源泉。他用潦草、高高低低的笔迹记录下每一分钱——城市设施股票、报纸路线、高尔夫球销售，以及弹子球。他的这些账目似乎预言了他将来的金融业绩，这使一个记者不由得想起一篇文章“霍雷肖。阿尔。杰将给哈佛商学院的贝克图书馆一笔损赠”。 事实上巴菲特曾申请过哈佛商学院。他信心十足地写信给选择念哥伦比亚法学院的奥兰斯说，“大杰里，重新考虑一下，和我一起去哈佛吧！”到了夏季，巴菲特坐火车到芝加哥会见一位男校友。瘦瘦的不修边幅的样子，他当时才19岁，让他的会见者不敢相信他是哈佛人士。会面的时间只持续了10分钟。在7月19日给“大杰里”写信的时候，巴菲特写了整整5张纸才写到这个消息。他告诉朋友说他正在学一门关于税收的课程，而且在学习用所有精明的办法从收益回报中榨出钱来。然后接着谈了谈“著名的炮弹服务”，对奥兰斯刚刚病愈的父亲表示了问候，最后是关于高尔夫球销售的问题。 现在说说我被拒绝的故事吧！那些哈佛的神气十足的家伙，没搞清楚的是他们应该让我进他们的研究生院。他们觉得19岁太年轻了，于是建议我等上1～2年。因此如今我只有面对生活的残酷现实。自我4周内在这儿开始付食宿费以来，我爸爸希望我去上某所学校的研究生，但我不太想接受这个主意。 两周以后，他又提起了这件事。“亲爱的大杰里，”他写道：坦白地说，当我收到哈佛来的信时，我的心都凉了。现在，我正等着申请哥伦比亚，他们那儿的金融系非常出色，至少他们有像格雷厄姆和多德这样两三位热门人物来教授普通股的评价知识。 巴菲特现在有点过于漠不关心了。事实上本杰明。格雷厄姆是证券行业的领头人；他和他的同事多德，曾经写过相关领域的研讨教科书《有价证券分析》（Security Analysis），而且巴菲特在林肯时刚读了格雷厄姆的一本新书《聪明的投资人》（The Intelli-gent Investor），而且感到这本书非常引人入胜。巴菲特的室友伍德说“它对巴菲特而言就像找到了上帝所在。” 他开玩笑地提到哥伦比亚的“热门人物”时可以看作是当他害怕再次被拒绝时反映出来的心态。但是在8月初，巴菲特收到一则好消息。他准备前往纽约和大师一起进行学习研究。