A day at the lake

Fear and Loathing in Waynesboro column by Chris Graham
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I, ahem, invited myself to Lofton Lake this past weekend, and I have to report after traipsing around the premises for a few hours on Saturday that it has been seriously oversold as being a “retreat” featuring cabins owned by “some of the region’s most prominent figures.”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice place, if you’re into spartan accommodations. It is true that there are cabins on the premises, and at least one of the owners lives at the lake year-round. I just don’t know that anything I saw made me think that the owners consider themselves to be among the gilded gentry, though I guess that itself could be a matter of interpretation.

The bulk of my tour of Lofton Lake was spent navigating my way around the perimeter of the lake, and being pointed to tents on the properties of shareholders like city manager Doug Walker and Waynesboro-based real-estate developer Bill Hausrath that serve as the facilities. At the center of the property is a collection of buildings that appear to date back to the lake’s days as the Kiwanis campground. Aging cinderblock is the prevailing motif, with the only departure from that brand of architecture being a small cabin about half the size of the Downtown Pavilion whose modern-day utility was questioned aloud by one of my tour guides.

Trust me when I say that I’m not withholding anything else in terms of details. There just aren’t any. And no, I didn’t leave feeling prominent or anything akin to prominent. It’s hard to feel too uppity when you’re driving down a dirt road.

As to why I’m writing about this today – it has to do with a question that my wife asked me when I got back from Lofton Lake Saturday afternoon.

“Well, it’s a gated community, isn’t it? I’m sure they had to have somebody there to let you back in there, didn’t they?”

No. But thanks to Jimmy LaRoue, everybody assumes that.