In Search of the National Spirit : Nostalgia: Americans are flocking to a mountain museum filled with mementos from a mythical TV clan, ‘The Waltons.’

They’ve all come to look for America.

It’s a land that may exist only in their fervid imaginations, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Here in the rolling hills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge, a monument has been built to the purity of love, the strength of family and the ability to come together during hard times.

It seems to be, for the people who visit it, their vision of the national spirit.

It’s the Walton Family--a paradigm of family values. And at the Walton’s Mountain Museum, fans of the hit TV show, which ran from 1972-81, can wallow in nostalgia for a way of life they feel is seriously endangered.

“It may not have really been that way; maybe it was what people wanted it to be,” says Bill Luhrs, referring to the show’s almost golden vision of the Depression era.

Luhrs is the 77-year-old co-founder of this brand-new tourist spot, located about 25 miles south of Charlottesville.

“I think for a lot of the fans of the show, there’s a hunger out there for something,” he says. “They’re unhappy with society.”

Which is probably why more than 5,000 Walton fanatics--some from as far away as England--flocked to this tiny village (population 400) when the museum held its opening ceremonies earlier this fall. Schuyler is the home town of Earl Hamner Jr., the writer-producer whose family served as inspiration for the long-running series.

Two years ago, when the local elementary school was closed for consolidation reasons, the city officials wanted to use the building as a community center, but lacked funding. So when the idea of a Walton museum came up, they turned to what Luhrs calls “the best asset we have--Earl Hamner.”

Hamner donated memorabilia, acted as a liaison between Schuyler and Lorimar TV (producers of the show), and donated $10,000 to the museum fund. The museum was also financed by a $30,000 state grant and $10,000 raised locally.

Everything else, says Luhrs, a former New Yorker who moved to this area a few years ago, “was accomplished by someone who was born here, lives here, or lives within a few miles of here.”

Because Lorimar couldn’t find the show’s original sets or the plans for them, localites took over. They watched reruns on the Family Channel, made notes about key locations--the living room and kitchen, John-Boy’s bedroom and Ike Godsey’s country store--then scoured the area in an attempt to construct re-creations from artifacts true to the period.

The result is a series of vivid tableaux as accurate as a time capsule:

* The kitchen with its icebox and wood-burning stove;

* The country store with its 100-year-old display cases;

* The living room featuring floral patterned upholstery, a foot-pumped organ more than a century old, and, sitting on a side table, a 1927 issue of the newspaper Grit .

There’s also a theater-like room with a large-screen TV showing a documentary on the show, and a display case featuring such items as Walton dolls, the Emmy that Hamner won for the show, magazines with Walton covers, and foreign-language translations of the Hamner book which started it all, “Spencer’s Mountain.”

Museum-goers seem to love the results. Despite Schuyler’s relative isolation, they have been coming in a steady stream from as far away as Holland.

“We just love the show,” says Jean Munson of Kensington, Conn., who’s here with her husband, Walter, to visit the museum. The Munsons run a Christian bus tour company and plan to add Schuyler to their itinerary. “We like the family togetherness you would see on the show,” Munson adds, “and I think today that’s lost. The Christian values are lost.”

Says Robert Theisen of Marinette, Wis., responding to critics who have said the show is treacly and unreal: “Maybe they haven’t had a good close family of their own. People do care about each other. And I don’t think the Walton family would have some of the values we just voted in . . . like abortion and gay rights.”

Bill Luhrs thinks all this adulation is well and good, but he has another agenda.

He looks out over the building--the large auditorium, the mostly unused schoolrooms, the remnants of a library--and sees a vibrant community center. Over there, aerobics classes. Downstairs, maybe a computer center for the children. And every Saturday night a big who-ha for the town, where, for a modest admission fee, the folks can bring their kids, have a meal and hear live music.

All this financed from admissions shelled out by the fans of John-Boy, Olivia, Jim Bob and Grandpa.

“It’s the center that’s important,” says Luhrs emphatically. “This is something special--it has to do with human beings, not making a buck.”