Miss the past? Don’t worry. There’s a developer out there rebuilding the past just for you.

This is from the promotional material for “Mayberry Hills,” a new “downtown” community at Smith Mountain Lake:

Downtown Moneta’s Mayberry Hills brings the friendly, family neighborhood of “the past” back to life. We’ve designed the entire neighborhood so you actually get to know your neighbors. We brought back the front porch, sidewalks lit by streetlamps, and beautiful landscaping so everyone can enjoy a glass of ice tea, a leisurely conversation or an evening walk with the neighbors.

Smith Mountain Lake, in many ways, is scab on the landscape of Southwestern Virginia. Here’s the way the “Downtown Moneta” web site describes it:

Smith Mountain Lake with its 512 miles of shoreline is Virginia’s second largest body of water. It is a 22,000-acre lake and as a resort it compares to what many call the “ Lake Tahoe of the East”. The Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce mailed out 18,000 information packets in 2004 to potential new residents and visitors and over 20,000 in 2005. This is up from 2,600 requests in previous years.

Lake Tahoe of the East? God help us.

Then we have this in an ad in Mountain Living, one of those developer-oriented magazines that favors turning mountains into vertical subdivisions:

Named by National Geographic Magazine as one of the top senic man-made lakes in the world, Lake Lure is truly in a class by itself.

Sure is, if the class is phony lifestyles of the rich and foolish.