In the tiny town of Erwin, Tenn., history is the elephant in the room.
At the Unicoi County Chamber of Commerce, Cathy Huskins remembers one particularly angry tourist “came barreling through the door, and came up to the counter here and slung her hands down. … And she says, ‘I cannot believe that you killed an elephant!’ “
Librarian Angie Georgeff is used to the strange phone calls and unannounced visits from world travelers:
“They just want to know, ‘Is it true? Is it true? Did it really happen?’ ” Georgeff says. “Well, it did really happen. You know, there’s agreement about that.”
Sometimes Georgeff even points visitors out the library window, down the long vein of railroad tracks, to where it happened — to where the town of Erwin hanged an elephant.
This year, four high school students in nearby Elizabethton made a podcast about all this for NPR’s first Student Podcast Challenge — and their 11-minute piece won the high school category.
“Kill the…
