It happened like this. Mr. Bible, (first name Tim), teaches computers at Trevecca Nazarene University in Tennessee. I recently received an urgent e-mail from one of his students.

        “Since you are in Kentucky,” she wrote, “I thought you might know the Zip Code of Pig.”

        Seems Mr. Bible had assigned an Internet scavenger hunt, and one of the tasks was to find this code.

        I didn't even know Pig existed, much less stumped computer students in Chattanooga.

        “That is the hardest question on there,” Mr. Bible told me later. “People get so upset about Pig, Ky., I thought about driving up there.”

Small town talk

        What he would find is a classic wide-spot-in-the-road, where church meets every other Sunday due to the scarcity of customers.

        About 300 people live in Pig, located next to Mammoth Cave National Park about 150 miles southwest of Cincinnati.

        Many residents commute to nearby Bowling Green. Others raise soybeans, tobacco or chickens. Only one person farms pigs in Pig.

        Around 5:30 a.m., the regulars arrive at the town's only restaurant, the Porky Pig Diner, where they catch up on community gossip.

        “They gang up here of a morning to discuss last night's news,” says Ramona Durham, the owner.

        In the afternoon, tourists arrive from the caves. Others might stop during road trips through Kentucky.

        Pig is a beautiful spot, says Duc Do of the Louisville Bicycle Club, which came through last year.

        It's so rural that the parking lot of the Porky Pig doubles as a deer-check station, which explains the blood stains on the gravel.

For name's sake

        Joan Wood, 72, is Pig's unofficial historian.

        “I'm just the oldest one in town, is what it is,” she says cheerfully.

        Years ago, towns became towns when they got post offices, which required them to have names. Pig's came about like this, Ms. Wood says:

        “The farmers all met on the porch (of the general store) to decide what to call the community. They all wanted it named after them, and they couldn't agree. This old scrawny pig came down the road, and they said, “We'll call it Pig.”'

        The post office closed in 1938, but the name stuck.

        Pig is located in Edmonson County, where the big news about eight years ago was the conversion to normal phone service. Until Ms. Wood and her neighbors made a fuss, each phone line in Pig was shared among eight households.

        That's right, eight. One Mother's Day, Ms. Wood's son finally got through to her at 2:30 a.m., and even then, the town gossip was eavesdropping.

        “Believe you me, there were no secrets,” Ms. Wood says.

        She was surprised to learn Pig is a question in an Internet scavenger hunt.

        “I feel for them, bless their hearts,” she says of the students. “I wouldn't have a computer for anything. It would scare me to death.”

        Well, shoot. I wasn't going to tell, but Ms. Wood might think that was mean.

        (The answers are 42210 or 42171, depending on where you live along Pig's main road.)

        Contact: (859) 578-5584 or at ksamples@enquirer.com.

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