Jim Souhan: 60 minutes to Miami

KILN, MISS. — On Friday afternoon, after the tailgate party in front of the new mural at Dolly's and before another visit to The Broke Spoke, Brett Favre's mother, Bonita, watched friends plant a sign from Wisconsin into the Mississippi mud to honor her son, the adopted Minnesotan.

The sign, a gold goalpost holding a football-shaped placard, replaced the old sign that welcomed visitors to Kiln. Hurricane Katrina ripped that one out, and Bonita lobbied to have it replaced.

Two days before her son will face the Saints in the first NFC title game to be held in New Orleans, Bonita watched a sign donated by a Green Bay Packers shareholder that once advertised a Packers supper club called "The Tundra House" sink into the ground near Dolly's gas station and cafe. The sign reads: "Kiln, Mississippi, Home of Brett Favre, Welcome."

"I've been a Saints fan all my life," Bonita said, between Miller Lites and Marlboros. "We've been waiting 43 years to go to a Super Bowl. What's one more year? Brett's getting old. They [the Saints] can wait another year."

Isn't Brett coming back for another season? "Oh," she said, waving her hands, "who knows?"

Bonita, like her friends and relatives, was wearing a purple T-shirt with her son's name on it. When she wore her Vikings hat, it read: "4 Love of The Game," in reference to her son's jersey number. When she took off that hat, she put on a Vikings horned helmet.

Kiln is one hour east of New Orleans, and it is packed with Saints fans who suddenly feel conflicted about their team's success, all because of Favre.

Hello, Dolly's

Later, Bonita wandered from the sign over to the tailgate party by the mural on the side of Dolly's, the town's gathering place.

Dolly Lee, the owner, hired a painter from New Orleans to create a new mural on the side of her business. The old one honored Favre's Green Bay career. The new one features the helmet of every team he ever played for, from Hancock North Central High through the Vikings.

The mural reads: Kiln, Mississippi! Where the Legend Began!

As music by Cher, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Dolly's husband, Keith, blared over speakers set up in the parking lot, Bonita signed her name under the Vikings helmet, then danced under it.

On the other side of the street, the infamous Packers/Jets/Vikings/Saints bar The Broke Spoke has plastered a Vikings poster over the Packers colors on the outhouse in the parking lot.

Not So Broke

Last week, two visitors from Minnesota had approached the graffiti-riddled front door of what locals call "The Spoke," just as local air-conditioning salesman extraordinaire Marvin Lacoste reached the steps.

Lacoste fixed the visitors with a wary glare and asked, "Y'all got knives?"

The visitors shook their heads.

He was joking.

Inside, the Broke Spoke looked the same as ever, with a few more dashes of purple. When Favre became a star, the Broke Spoke became Lourdes for Packer fans -- if Lourdes had hundreds of bras and panties hanging from the ceiling and cheeseburger soup in the crock pot.

Now, the TV behind the bar is flanked by one Favre Vikings jersey and one Drew Brees Saints jersey.

On Wednesday night, the owner, Steve Haas, a friend of the Favre family, sat on a stool next to the dual lines painted down the middle of the floor, between the pool tables. The line representing the Saints is black. The line representing Favre's new team is purple.

"I'm pulling for Brett," Haas said. "I've been a Saints fan all my life. This is a win-win situation for the people here. I've been pulling for the Saints to go to the Super Bowl forever, but not this time.

On Sundays, the patrons stack bar stools on the pool tables to create what Haas calls "stadium seating." On Wednesday night, the Spoke was half-full, and the Vikings-Cowboys playoff game was replaying on the TVs, as the famous country song "The Race Is On" played on the jukebox.

Saints fans Gregory and Daniegirl Ladner, of Dedeaux, Miss., approached Haas. Daniegirl pointed to Greg and said, "His middle initial is J, which stands for 'The Saints are Just going to the Super Bowl."'

Greg nodded and said, "The Saints are going to the Super Bowl. Brett's Daddy was a Saints fan. Brett was a Saints fan. I'm a Brett Favre fan -- when he don't play the Saints."

Even on a quiet Wednesday night, there were two Northerners in the bar. Pearce Sunderland, who was born in Milton, N.D., had just come from a Shriners meeting with Lacoste. "I'm standing on the Vikings' side of the bar on Sunday," he said. "I watched Joe Kapp back in '69.

"I guess there's enough sadness on both sides to go around. The Saints have always had their problems, and the Vikings have gotten there four times without making it to the promised land, and I watched them lose all four. This time, you're a winner on both sides. Somebody you care about is going to the Super Bowl. It's a good deal."

"I had the same feeling this year. I went to both Vikings-Packers games, and I didn't care who won, I was either going to be happy for the Packers or happy for Brett. I'd be even happier if (Packers general manager) Ted Thompson wasn't in Green Bay anymore."

When the Ladners yelled the Saints' rallying cry, "Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?" Haas answered, "We dat!"

Cold beer and warm feelings

Bonita turned to her friends, pointed at the poster of a lithe Budweiser model wearing a bikini on a poster, and asked, "How come Stevie put my picture up without asking me?" Then she took another swig of her Miller Lite.

She was standing in the parking lot of The Spoke, and she was talking about Brett with a crowd of people wearing purple.

She'll have tickets for today's game. "Brett is playing so well," she said. "It's unbelievable, at 40 years old. It's like he keeps getting better. His enthusiasm and childlike behavior has never changed. That's not something you can develop. It's born in you."

Friday afternoon, she wore purple, but when a friend asked to borrow a Favre jersey from her, she shook her head. "I only have two myself," she said. "We don't buy too many.