prices.
"It was very expensive bacon," chuckled Charlie. "I think my father
did it mostly because he liked raising pigs."
When he first joined the military, Munger was an ordinary soldier,
and his training gave him time to think about his future. "As a private in
the Army in Utah in a tent, in the mud and snow-very unpleasant conditions-I remember talking to someone. I said I wanted a lot of children, a
house with lots of books, enough money to have freedom."
After Munger took the Army General Classification Test, he found out
that a score of 120 qualified a soldier to be commissioned as an officer.
Charlie did much better than that, scoring 149. He soon was promoted to
Second Lieutenant.'
He was first dispatched to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and then to a distinguished private college of science and engineering, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, to
train as a meteorologist. In plainer language, he would be a weather forecaster. Charlie took one look around Pasadena and knew he liked his new
surroundings.
Pasadena was a graceful old town, full of Spanish colonial-style mansions and shaded by billowing purple jacarandas and fragrant eucalyptus
and pepper trees. It had been settled a hundred years earlier by Midwesterners who built impressive churches and cultural institutions like the
ones they enjoyed back home. Smog wasn't yet the problem it would become, and on most days, the San Gabriel Mountains seemed so close
that you could reach out and touch them. To the west stretched the energetic, exotic metropolis of Los Angeles.
"Southern California was quite different. It looked like a bigger, more
interesting place than Omaha, a city that I love," he said.
Munger's three roommates at Caltech also impressed him favorably.
One roommate, Henry Magnin, was the son of an influential Reform Jewish rabbi. The second was the son of a music professor famous for teaching prodigies, and another was from a family of well-known scientists and
inventors. "They were all Californians. Interesting guys with interesting
families," recalled Charlie.
Following his weatherman training, Munger was dispatched to
Alaska, which was cold and dark, but, according to his own account, not
particularly dangerous. Charlie noted that his experience contrasted
starkly with the dangers to which others were exposed. U.S. casualties in
World War II totaled 292,000 dead, 672,000 wounded, and 140,000 taken
prisoner or declared missing.
The war interrupted his education, but it did not have the deeply formative influence on him that it had on others, said Charlie. "I don't think
I knew well 15 people who died in World War II. It wasn't like a whole
generation of young men died, as the Europeans did in World War I or
Americans in the Civil War. I never got near military action. I was stationed in Nome. I couldn't have gotten farther from action."
Just as Munger had avoided the poverty and degradation of the Depression, he was spared from the battlefield by serving in a vital noncombat job. Nevertheless, his years in the military allowed him to refine
what later became an important skill-card playing.
"Playing poker in the Army and as a young lawyer honed my business
skills," said Charlie. "What you have to learn is to fold early when the
odds are against you, or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you
don't get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesn't come often,
so seize it when it does come."
Munger's deployment to Caltech coincidentally overlapped with
his sister Mary's enrollment at nearby Scripps College. She introduced
Charlie to one of her classmates, a girl named Nancy Huggins, whose family owned a shoe store that catered to the well-heeled residents of
Pasadena. The whole nation was in the throes of wartime angst, and
young love, under the threat of long or even permanent separation, became highly romanticized. The combination of youth, war,
"It was very expensive bacon," chuckled Charlie. "I think my father
did it mostly because he liked raising pigs."
When he first joined the military, Munger was an ordinary soldier,
and his training gave him time to think about his future. "As a private in
the Army in Utah in a tent, in the mud and snow-very unpleasant conditions-I remember talking to someone. I said I wanted a lot of children, a
house with lots of books, enough money to have freedom."
After Munger took the Army General Classification Test, he found out
that a score of 120 qualified a soldier to be commissioned as an officer.
Charlie did much better than that, scoring 149. He soon was promoted to
Second Lieutenant.'
He was first dispatched to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and then to a distinguished private college of science and engineering, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, to
train as a meteorologist. In plainer language, he would be a weather forecaster. Charlie took one look around Pasadena and knew he liked his new
surroundings.
Pasadena was a graceful old town, full of Spanish colonial-style mansions and shaded by billowing purple jacarandas and fragrant eucalyptus
and pepper trees. It had been settled a hundred years earlier by Midwesterners who built impressive churches and cultural institutions like the
ones they enjoyed back home. Smog wasn't yet the problem it would become, and on most days, the San Gabriel Mountains seemed so close
that you could reach out and touch them. To the west stretched the energetic, exotic metropolis of Los Angeles.
"Southern California was quite different. It looked like a bigger, more
interesting place than Omaha, a city that I love," he said.
Munger's three roommates at Caltech also impressed him favorably.
One roommate, Henry Magnin, was the son of an influential Reform Jewish rabbi. The second was the son of a music professor famous for teaching prodigies, and another was from a family of well-known scientists and
inventors. "They were all Californians. Interesting guys with interesting
families," recalled Charlie.
Following his weatherman training, Munger was dispatched to
Alaska, which was cold and dark, but, according to his own account, not
particularly dangerous. Charlie noted that his experience contrasted
starkly with the dangers to which others were exposed. U.S. casualties in
World War II totaled 292,000 dead, 672,000 wounded, and 140,000 taken
prisoner or declared missing.
The war interrupted his education, but it did not have the deeply formative influence on him that it had on others, said Charlie. "I don't think
I knew well 15 people who died in World War II. It wasn't like a whole
generation of young men died, as the Europeans did in World War I or
Americans in the Civil War. I never got near military action. I was stationed in Nome. I couldn't have gotten farther from action."
Just as Munger had avoided the poverty and degradation of the Depression, he was spared from the battlefield by serving in a vital noncombat job. Nevertheless, his years in the military allowed him to refine
what later became an important skill-card playing.
"Playing poker in the Army and as a young lawyer honed my business
skills," said Charlie. "What you have to learn is to fold early when the
odds are against you, or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you
don't get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesn't come often,
so seize it when it does come."
Munger's deployment to Caltech coincidentally overlapped with
his sister Mary's enrollment at nearby Scripps College. She introduced
Charlie to one of her classmates, a girl named Nancy Huggins, whose family owned a shoe store that catered to the well-heeled residents of
Pasadena. The whole nation was in the throes of wartime angst, and
young love, under the threat of long or even permanent separation, became highly romanticized. The combination of youth, war,
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