A lot has been written on the world’s most successful investor, Warren Buffett, known as “The Oracle of Omaha.” Much material has dedicated itself to unlocking his secrets to success, with hopes that you too, can become that billionaire investor, without, supposedly, a care in the world.

Growing up, although I lived in Nebraska, also Buffett’s home state, I didn’t think much about money, investors, or even the figure of Buffett—at all. Even while in college and graduate school, running or walking past his house in Omaha, I didn’t think much about any of it—I was busy studying literature and art in something of a bubble of my own making—and that was my entire focus.

And yes, Buffett’s house is a proper mansion—which he bought in 1958 for around $31,000—with stone lions in front of the gate, in the well kept Dundee neighborhood of Omaha’s midtown area—a neighborhood of curving drives and manicured lawns in front of older, attractive homes. The stone lions in front of his gate in the snow were actually the inspiration for a poem I composed before I knew whose house it was—“Prediction,” about the turning of the season towards winter, was later published by the University of Minnesota’s literary magazine, Dislocate.

And yet—it isn’t what one would consider a rich man’s spread—as we have all become familiar with such digs through reality TV shows. Huge sprawling estates with fountains, pools, multiple garages filled with 20-30 cars and other vehicles. Some of the homes in good taste, and some glaring examples of the gaudy and extreme. More tilting toward the latter end of that spectrum, if you ask me.

As I got older and experienced living in and visiting other parts of the country, such as New York City, California, and here, in Arizona, I started reading more about Buffett. I think what tipped it off in the years before this current financial melt down, is the experience of living in Brooklyn.

The really weird thing about New York City, if you have never been there, is that it is a big city, yes, but that everything is really on a very small scale. This is especially so if you have grown up in an area with an expanse of space, such as the Midwest or any of the Western states. Our towns are relatively far apart, and it is not unusual for someone living in Nebraska to drive four or five hours to visit somebody living over in Iowa on a weekend.

Our university campuses are big, as are corporate campuses, with lawns and various buildings. Restaurants are large and comfortable, with places to sit down, almost always. We have a lot of space, in short, and actually take it for granted.

In New York City, taking that leap from Brooklyn over to Manhattan is kind of a big deal, I found out. It’s like a town scheme—you know, with the good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods, and ethnic areas—on steroids. A kind of a Balkanization, if you get my drift. One of the first interviews I had in the city was with a man in an Empire State building office who assured me that he came from Brooklyn, too, so he understood what being from there was like, and that I too, could get ahead in the successful world of Manhattan.

I remember thinking that was really a weird statement, as my address was only an approximately 25 minute subway ride away from midtown Manhattan, and my common sense, dare I say ‘Midwestern,’ attitude towards renting an apartment was that—Oh, no, I was not going to pay $1500 a month for a broom closet when I could live in a decent, safe, one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn for $650. And I doubt, no matter what the salary of the job he could offer me—that this would ever change.

What I’m saying is—remember that scene in Saturday Night Fever when Travolta is considering ‘moving to the city,’ from Brooklyn and it was like, a great big leap? Even though, in reality, it is only a few miles--if that--away? Well, that attitude actually sort of exists.

Maybe I’d make the leap over to Park Slope, Brooklyn, a neighborhood with brownstones, bookstores, and a lot of gentrification—but still maintaining the smattering of ethnicities and ethnic shops I loved about neighborhoods in New York. Then there is that pioneer part of me that would have considered renovating some old building in supposedly dangerous Bushwick into an artist’s loft of my dreams.

In essence, what I saw in New York was that it contained an attitude toward a world of somebody else’s creation—one which had a lot to do with image—but often very little to do with reality and the actual value of something. And one, being an outsider, that perhaps I found easier in reading through the hype. I didn’t have any of the hang-ups associated with supposedly living in a second class New York neighborhood—either socially or economically.

And what does this have to do with Buffett?

After reading more about him, his strategies and his way of looking at things—which have been called clearheaded and brilliant as well as hokey and corn-ball Midwestern—I believe his greatest talent to be that of reading through all the hype.

As the rest of the country goes through the withdrawal pains and illness of what essentially amounts to an eight-year drunken bender—gorging on ill-gotten credit and the fantasy of ‘looking’ rich with houses nobody could actually afford, CEO’s reaping huge profits and obscene $22 million dollar salaries off stoking these addictions and desires they have in part been responsible for creating—Buffett is content in his history of good decisions based on understanding the actual value of what he buys, content every year as chairman of his company to take a salary of only $100,000.

Free to see the value of any human endeavor as only as good as the components of its management’s integrity, and the essential parts of what any product actually is.

Such as the fact that a house or an apartment is a shelter, made a home by the effort of those who live there—despite the square footage or a high profile, ‘expensive’ address.

Free to live comfortably and well and offer his help, while others who took part in the hype are losing their houses and their shirts, or worse—creating a toxic economic atmosphere for others to live in and to deal with—or even gloating in the melee and their take.

Free even to view this economic downturn as an opportunity.

One might say he takes this way of thinking to an art form.

I can appreciate that.