Gossip Friday: Drug Store Patriot

From October 1943:

Captain Clark Gable, now back in Hollywood, editing the films he shot on bombing missions over Germany, tells this story on himself.

A few miles on his Encino ranch, there is a small drug and candy store where he used to go for breakfast before he was in the Army. Returning home, and still needing breakfast, even though he wears a hero’s medals, he headed for the same drug store. Man and womanpower being what it is these days, there was only one waitress on duty, a new girl, and she’d got Clark all the way through his ham and eggs before she recognized him. When she gasped out his name, he beat it out of there, and thought that was that.

But a week later, Clark got hungry on the way to town and decided to invade the drug store once again. In he went, only to discover one seat roped off with red, white, and blue ribbons. On the seat itself was a small American flag in a standard. On the counter before all this was a neat sign, saying, “Clark Gable sat here.”

Considerably embarrassed, Clark asked the waitress how she got away with it all.

She said, smiling proudly, “I let those that buy war bonds sit there.”