You'd think he'd be easy to find. Irvin Favre lived on Irvin Farve Road. Not in Kiln, Miss., exactly, but close enough. The local fire department had asked that all the roads be named and marked with a sign, even if only one family lived on them. Big Irv, father of Brett, named the road after himself, seeing as his was the only house on it.

After the sign was stolen twice and filled full of bullet holes, Irv had it misspelled on purpose.

Steve Schoenfeld, an NFL writer, and I couldn't find it. We found a golf course, some tennis courts and a convenience store that sold for $5 a Brett Favre doll made of cheese. We also found the Broke Spoke, a one-room bar with seven stools, a bartender named Tub and women's underwear stapled to the ceiling. It was the social epicenter of Kiln. "Lots of Broken Spokes all over the world," said the owner, one Stevie Ray Haas. "We got the only Broke Spoke."

After asking several locals where Big Irv's house was, Schoenfeld found it, down a gravel road next to Rotten Bayou. Irv Favre was genial, if a bit down. One of his dogs had strayed too close to the water. An alligator ate it.

This was almost seven years ago. Brett Favre was playing in the Super Bowl in New Orleans, an hour west. He was the MVP of the league. Brett is at it again, leading the Packers into an improbable divisional playoff game at Philadelphia this weekend. Irv won't be around to see it. He died Dec. 21, in his truck, of a heart attack or stroke. Big Irv was just 58.

Brett has played three miraculous football games since, including a transcendent show of skill and courage (and four touchdown passes in the first half) on a Monday night, barely 24 hours after Irv's death. "I miss my dad," Brett said after the Packers beat Seattle last week. "But my obligation is to this team."

On that day seven years ago, Irv Favre welcomed two total strangers into his home. Schoenfeld and I weren't alone. Some 50 media members would pass through his doors that week, to ask Irv questions about Brett, his "pigeon-toed little boy." By Super Sunday, Irv's house on Rotten Bayou in Kiln, Miss., population 1,582, was as well known as Bourbon Street.

"We Favres are common people. We want to leave everyone with the impression we're good people. Not flashy. We're not trying to impress anybody," Irv said. I asked him how his family passed the time in such a small place.

"We'd visit family and friends," Irv said. "Our kids would play with their kids. We'd eat a lot of seafood. Later on, we'd come back home."

Earlier in the week, a few overzealous Packers fans walked past the Favres' living room window, while Irv and his wife. Bonita, were still in their bathrobes.

"No problem," Irv said. "They just wanted to see where Brett lives."

Five days after Schoenfeld and I talked to Bonita and Big Irv, Brett and the Packers beat the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl. The Favres threw a party for the whole town.

Irv Favre was one of those guys everyone figured was too tough to die. Big Irv had a great football head, the kind that had housed a helmet so long, it simply assumed that shape. He was Brett's high school coach. Once, when one of his players told Irv that he couldn't attend an offseason conditioning session because he had a baseball game that night, Irv whacked him with a paddle.

Nobody thought Irv Favre would be dying anytime soon.

Three years after we made the drive from New Orleans to Kiln, Steve Schoenfeld was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Tempe, Ariz. Steve was 45.

Mortality never comes with an explanation.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com