We clearly remember when we wrote this: traveling through Wisconsin for a wedding around the time of our 30th birthday (Oct. 30, 2006). The premise: Let Brett Favre decide when he wants to retire. You perhaps will disagree. Here it is:

At a bar in Milwaukee called At Random, pictures of Frank Sinatra are the norm, and hard alcohol is the only thing on the drink menu.
The guy working the front doesn’t like riffraff, and the overall atmosphere makes Nye’s seem like a cyber cafe.

Discovering a group of Saturday patrons was from Minneapolis, one of the waitresses — they’re all the good kind of grizzled — said, “You guys are five years ahead of us there.” That would make the rest of Milwaukee five years ahead of the woman at our hotel wearing a “Pack is Back” sweatshirt honoring the 1995 and ‘96 Packers teams — the heyday of the Brett Favre era.

Pockets of people eschew modern ways and the notion that newer is better. But as those pockets narrow elsewhere, they still seem wide and deep in Wisconsin. Strangely, a trip through Cheeseland with a 30th birthday approaching (and, today, arriving) was a harmonious juncture to think about moving forward. Though 30 is not generally an age at which sportswriters are put out to pasture (at least not usually. Hey, get your hands off of me!), we do like to try to tell athletes when it’s time to step aside. Often it’s in the name of “progress,” especially when the topic is Favre.

Informal conversations over the weekend with several Packers fans brought a general consensus: Favre should play until he is no longer competent, and then he should retire. But the media often portray the debate in practical terms — the sooner Favre retires or is benched, the sooner the Aaron Rodgers era can begin — and define progress as, essentially, out with the old, in with the new. A lot of Packers fans seem to see it differently. Sweatshirts aside, it’s not even that they’re living in the past. They just don’t want the ride to end.

Suddenly, it’s easier to see their logic — and, frankly, Favre’s logic. Let’s say, for example, that Kirby Puckett had not developed the unfortunate vision problems that forced him to retire before the 1996 season. And let’s say his skills gradually eroded to the point that in 1999, at age 39, he hit around .280 with 17 home runs. Those would have been acceptable numbers, but the Twins still wouldn’t have been any closer to first place because of them. And they would have had Torii Hunter waiting to take over in center field.

Puckett is to Minnesota what Favre is to Wisconsin. So the questions are these: At what point does someone mean so much to an organization that he can dictate the right to go out on his own terms? Puckett won two World Series titles; Favre won a Super Bowl. And ultimately, what defines progress?

A friend from Wisconsin recently made a very good point. When Favre was awful last season — 29 interceptions and a 70.9 passer rating - fans and media members realized he had been getting a free pass as a gunslinger for too long. But this season, when Favre has been criticized as a swashbuckling relic in the media more than any other, he has actually played pretty well under the circumstances. He’s not at mid-1990s levels — or even his 2004 level, when Favre threw for more than 4,000 yards with a 92.4 QB rating — but these are not the 1996 or even 2004 Packers. Even with limited resources, Favre has played like a top-15 quarterback. Would it be progress to have Rodgers win four games this season instead of having Favre win seven? No, say the fans.

“I’m a die-hard, and I want him playing,” said another woman at the hotel, decked out in her Favre jersey Sunday morning. “He’s a constant, and we need an anchor.”

You go to Milwaukee for a wedding, and you find people who want something to hold on to in our disposable culture and our always-rebuilding teams.

Besides, it’s pretty obvious you can get a beer anywhere else in Milwaukee. Sometimes you need to sit in a dim corner of At Random and be reminded that change isn’t synonymous with progress.

“Besides,” one fan said, “I like Brett.”

Those can be pretty powerful sentiments, even while we’re moving forward.

Question: It was pretty much asked in the story, but what does an athlete/coach have to accomplish in order to dictate the terms of his/her retirement? And what would have happened in the aforementioned Puckett scenario?

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