The Side Hill Rudabob
As remembered, misremembered, and made up on the spot
In the crumpled hem of the Smoky Mountains, not far from where gravity gets confused and maps give up, there lives—or once lived—a peculiar creature known as the Side Hill Rudabob.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “That sounds made up.”
And it is. But only in the way dreams are made up. Or democracy.
See, the Rudabob wasn’t born so much as it slid into the world, sideways, somewhere between a landslide and a thunderclap. According to the oldest known account—scratched into a birch tree and later mistranslated by a drunk surveyor—the first Rudabob was spotted in 1823 by a trapper named Elias Mudge. Elias had one glass eye and one wooden foot, which made him uniquely sympathetic to asymmetry.
The creature he saw had legs shorter on one side than the other, a long tail used primarily for counterbalance, and a face that looked like it had been carved out of bacon rind by a blind god in a hurry. It walked only in circles around hills, always to the left, never the right—’cept one known specimen from Kentucky, but that one was considered cursed and eventually joined a Baptist church.
Local legend says the Rudabob evolved that way to cling to mountain slopes without falling off. Others claim it was divine punishment for sloth. My uncle Emory said it was the ghost of a bootlegger’s mule that refused to pay taxes.
In the winter of 1894, during the Great Whiskey Drought, Rudabob pelts were considered currency in three counties. A full-grown one fetched enough to buy a Winchester rifle, a month’s supply of tinned peaches, and the affections of a lonely widow with cataracts. But they were devilish hard to hunt, on account of you could only chase them in a clockwise direction. If you tried to cut across, they’d just roll down the hill like a dropped watermelon.
By 1932, sightings had dwindled. Some say the last one was seen circling a coal mine in West Virginia, muttering softly to itself in what sounded like Morse code. Others claim the last Rudabob went into politics and is currently serving in Congress. Both are plausible.
Today, the Rudabob lives mostly in stories and in the liminal space between myth and memory. But if you ever find yourself on a hillside at dusk, and the wind starts whispering leftward, you might just see a strange track curving endlessly into the trees. That’s your sign.
And as they used to say, just before the fire burned low and the jug came back around—
“And with that, the crooked truth straightens itself out.”