This is where Brett Favre grew up. Or, rather, was raised up, as they say here, where going to Wednesday prayer meetin’ and boiling crawfish produce roughly the same spiritual experience.
It’s a two-blink crossroads 15 miles across the Louisiana state line where, as a wild-haired teen-ager, the Green Bay Packers quarterback spent summers throwing footballs, water skiing over the brackish waters of Rotten Bayou or throwing back brews at the only biker bar in town – The Broke Spoke.
Life couldn’t be much simpler than it is in this rural community of 1,582. And, if you know Favre, he wouldn’t want it any other way, even after he signs a $7 million-a-year contract after next Sunday’s Super Bowl in New Orleans, just an hour away from Kiln.
“Yeah, Brett was back here just before the playoffs. Came down Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Same old Brett, same old person,” said good ol’ boy Stevie Haas, 38, the bearded, boisterous owner of the Spoke.
There are no fast-track flights from Green Bay to New Orleans, unless you own your own plane, which Favre soon might. But despite having only three days off during the bye week of the playoffs, Favre couldn’t wait to get out of the deep freeze and back to his people.
“A bunch of us went over to Brett’s place and hung out, ate seafood and watched the San Francisco game,” said Haas.
For Favre’s hell-raising friends, it was a short but sweet few days that must have reminded them of those beer-slugging weekends when Brett roared home from Southern Mississippi University in nearby Hattiesburg.
They don’t have a Nieman-Marcus here in Kiln. Nor one of them hair styling shops for men.
What they do have is catfishing, rabbit hunting, wide open spaces, athletic fields and Irvin Favre, Brett’s no-neck, crew-cut father, who is a dead ringer for former Baltimore Colts defensive lineman Artie Donovan.
“Brett flew us up last week when the Packers beat the Panthers,” Irvin Favre said. “I’m not one of those people who cries easily. But I was shedding tears like everyone else. There was a lot of emotion at that game.”
“It has been a long and very tough year, and it was a great feeling seeing what my son had accomplished after all that had happened.”
There had been a lot of pressure on Brett after the Packers faltered in the fourth quarter of the 1995 NFC Championship Game against Dallas. Then, even before the first minicamp, he was ordered by the NFL into a rehabilitation center to purge himself of a dependency on pain killers.
He emerged 46 days later fitter and more mature than perhaps any time in his life and led the Packers to a 15-3 record and a trip to next Sunday’s game against the New England Patriots.
Though he has won the league MVP trophy two years in a row, he seems still to have everything in front of him – a new contract, more than 30 endorsement offers on the table and a burgeoning legion of followers. All this at age 27.
Maybe he wouldn’t give it all up for an afternoon on Rotten Bayou, but he’d probably think about it.
Rotten Bayou isn’t far from the lush 44 acres Brett now owns behind his daddy’s house in nearby Fenton. Who knows why they call it Rotten Bayou? Not even the locals are sure, but most think it’s because after reeling in catfish, people would throw the bones back into the water. Eventually, it got a bit stinky.
This was the milieu in which Favre and his two brothers, Scott, 30, and Jeff, 23, and his sister, Brandi, 20, were reared by his school teacher parents.
“Weekends were spent out on Rotten Bayou or playing ball,” said Irvin Favre, who coached all three sons to be pitchers and quarterbacks.
Gifted with his father’s natural strength, Brett was by far the most talented.
“I played against him in high school. He went to Hancock North Central and I was a cornerback at Harrison,” said Brian Cumberland, 29, now a driver for UPS. “Thing is, they didn’t really throw the ball a lot. They ran the wishbone. But Brett had a real strong arm. Too strong for most high school kids.”
He wasn’t recruited by major universities. “And Southern Miss only wanted him as a defensive back or ‘a player,'” said Irvin Favre. “That’s what they call it when they don’t know where to put you. But when they saw how strong his arm was, they figured they’d better give him a look as a quarterback.”
He was good enough to be the Atlanta Falcons’ second-round draft pick in 1991. And the Falcons were dumb enough to trade him to the Packers.
In a town this small, everyone not only knows everyone else, but they know your personal habits, too.
“We’ve got a few guys at work who will tell you stories about Brett’s drinking binges at junior college,” said Cumberland. “But that’s what everyone did. You couldn’t go anywhere so you stayed on campus and drank.”
Terry Randolph has been the superintendent of Hancock County schools for 20 years and was the football coach at the high school when Favre was born. He laughs off the drinking stories – not as untrue, but as inconsequential.
“He was no different than a lot of boys around here,” Randolph said. “No different than I was when I was in high school here. Especially when you’re playing football and everyone knows you.
“Brett was not only a good athlete, he was a good scholar. He was the center of attention. Kids just naturally gathered around him. But he was never, ever one of those kids who used his popularity in a bad way.”
Irvin Favre knew early on how tough and committed his son was to being the best.
“When he was young I’d wear his butt out with a strap when I had to discipline him,” said his father. “He never cried. Not once. He’d just look at me like, ‘You ain’t hurtin’ me. I can take it. Give it to me.’ The other boys … Scott, I’d just look at him and he’d start crying.”
It’s not hard to find Kiln. From New Orleans, you go east on Interstate 10, cross a couple of bridges, wind your way through St. Tammany’s Parish and make a left turn when you get to Highway 43.
Four miles up the road, freshly erected about 100 yards before the crossroads, is the sign the town’s merchants put up on Friday: “Welcome to Kiln, Ms., Home of Brett Favre.”
Tributes to Brett are everywhere, including the windows of the yellow Hancock County school buses, on which children have painted such exhortations as “Brett Rules” and “Packers Win the Super Bowl.”
The North Hancock business association has recycled its Christmas tree into a Packers tree with spray paint and ornaments. The elementary school will serve green-and-old jello for dessert on Friday. And the high school will celebrate Brett Favre Day, with students and teachers making their own cheeseheads.
The Broke Spoke is adorned not only with Confederate flags, but also with Packers pennants, a Packers schedule, a Packers wind sock and even a Packers fishing lure decorating the walls and ceiling.
The town has one traffic signal, a perpetually blinking yellow light hanging above the middle of the road at the four corners.
On one side of the road is a gas station and Rooster’s Restaurant, where poulet with olives and homemade tasso are on the menu every day. On the other side is Dolly Lee’s deli/gas station and The Broke Spoke.
A kiln was what lumbering men used to refine wood here, though no one calls the town Kiln. It’s The Kiln. The Favres live 5 miles east of four corners, in Fenton.
Irvin and Bonita Favre moved into their ranch-style home 31 years ago. It’s secluded off a dirt road that was recently tarred over. A stream runs by the house, but the water is so dark Irvin never let his sons swim in it.
“I love this place for its privacy,” he said. “We’ve got no neighbors here. I can still go outside in my underwear.”
There is one dangerous curve in the long two-lane road leading out from four corners to the Favre home.
On July 14, 1990, the summer before his senior year at Southern Miss, Brett lost control of his car and rolled into a ravine. His life was never in danger, but he had serious internal injuries and doctors removed 30 inches of his intestine.
The accident, which happened about 6 p.m., is something of a mystery. No one wants to talk about whether Brett fell asleep at the wheel, as he explained, or whether he had been drinking.
But it sobered him in at least one way. “It made Brett think for the first time about his future,” said his father. “It concerned him.”
The Packers arrive in New Orleans this afternoon for a week of interviews, practices and gradually tightening curfews. The family is hoping he’ll be able to come home for a few hours Tuesday afternoon.
“He was talking about going rabbit hunting with me,” said Haas. “But he’s got the Pro Bowl after this and by the time he gets back, rabbit season will be over.”
It won’t be a problem. As the people who know him will tell you, Brett will never be bored in Kiln, Miss.
He never has been.
