Hatfield, Plugs, and Cornbread

The cry rang through the hooch, “Hatfield got a package!”

Most of the time when a GI got a package, everyone was happy.  It meant cookies, cake, candy, or other goodies to share.  A Hatfield package was a different matter.

Gary Hatfield was a son of Kentucky.  A raw-boned boy of the hills and hollows who stood a wiry six foot two, and mostly kept both quiet and to himself.

But……about once a month, his Kentucky family would send him a box with the word “Cornbread” clearly printed in several places on the wrapper.  The packaged contained corn, sugar, yeast, and other ingredients of cornbread, (sort of), but in a much more compact and liquid form.  All placed lovingly in a pint mason jar, and carefully padded against damage in shipment.

When Hatfield got a package, he would take out the mason jar, sit down on the sandbags at the front of the hooch, and finish it off in about a half hour of sipping and muttering, “Smoooooth.”

He would then come into the hooch, and punch the first man he ran into.  And he could punch.  He had the kind of strength that comes from having worked very hard from a very young age.

So, the warning, “Hatfield got a package,” and everyone decided to leave him alone in the hooch for a while.  The pattern was that after he had floored whoever he met first, he would retire to his bunk, pass out, and next be seen in the Mess at dawn shoveling in green-tinged powdered eggs covered with huge dollops of Tabasco Sauce, and appearing none the worse for wear.

But this time there was Plugs.  He was still pretty much a newbie, but part of the “FNG Training” we provided was a warning about Hatfield’s packages.

Plugs was a guy from Cicero, Illinois, and just about the largest human being most of us had seen outside of an NFL team picture.  He was solid.  He had hands that looked like he was wearing two Second Baseman’s mitts, and there was no discernible transition from his shoulders to his head.  He was built exactly like a large fire plug—so, Plugs.  When he was issued his GI glasses in basic training, the dispensary had ordered a special pair to get frames large enough to fit his head.

As the cry went out about Hatfield’s package, Plugs rumbled, “You want me to take care of this?”  The motion passed by general consensus.

Hatfield came weaving into the hooch. There stood Plugs.  Without a word, Hatfield caught him square on the cheek with a Kentucky Mule Kick.  Plugs didn’t blink.

He says to Hatfield, “I thought you were gonna hit me.”

Hatfield goes into a windup that would have made Cy Young proud, and comes from somewhere up around Murfreesboro with a Mutton Hollow Widow Maker. It catches Plugs on the point of the chin. Plugs blinks once. Then he quietly says to Hatfield, “You only get two for free.”

Hatfield starts into the windup again, and Plugs bends over at the waist, drives a shoulder into Hatfield’s midsection, and stands up with a flailing Hatfield in a Fireman’s Carry. He then turns and deposits Hatfield on his bunk and says, “If you’re smart, you’re passed out now.”

The next morning, per routine, Hatfield was in place at breakfast, shoveling in eggs. Plugs walks in and sat down beside him. “You know,” he rumbles, “the next time you get cornbread, you can save us both a lot of trouble if you share.”

After he got back to The World, Plugs took his GI Bill and enrolled in Southern Illinois University. He walked on to the football team, and became an All Conference standout offensive lineman for the Fighting Salukis. He took a degree in accounting, and reportedly returned to the Chicago area where he opened a tax practice, specializing in gentlemen who remember that taxes is how they got Capone.

No one seems to know what happened to Hatfield, though all of us figure we’ll see him, or a son that looks just like him, on an episode of the reality TV show, “Moonshiners.”