David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…He got part of the way west. Part of the way west. I think his maternal grandfather was already there in Omaha, that might have been why he headed there, but the other reason was that Omaha was a boom town at the time. It had existed for a long time. It was kind of a pit stop on the trail west, the Oregon Trail or the California Trail for gold prospectors heading out west. After the US civil war, Lincoln decrees that Omaha is going to be the headquarters of the new Union Pacific railroad, which is going to connect up the West Coast of the United States with the rest of the country. And the town takes off. Now interestingly, Union Pacific is still around and operating today, ironically as the second largest rail company in America, after Burlington Northern Santa Fe, owned by Berkshire Hathaway. But that wouldn’t come until part two. Sidney gets to town and decides he does want to be a farmer anymore. He instead wants to sell products from the farm. He opens up the first grocery store in Omaha. He runs it and then effectively passes it on to his son. His son, Ernest Buffett, (I think) actually technically set up a different story, but it’s like the family business, so Ernest is running the legacy of the grocery store in Omaha. As Alice points out in The Snowball, Ernest was very, very aptly named (as we’ll see), under Ernest management of the store, his quote that he likes to use is, “The hours are long, the pay is low, the opinions cast in iron, and the foolishness is zero.” Hardcore.…

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