Welcome to "Beautiful Downtown Van Wyck"

A lot of my blog readers have never heard of our sleepy little village of Van Wyck, South Carolina, bordering the Catawba River and located about halfway between Lancaster, SC and Pineville, NC.  The old timers here have tried to keep it a secret all of their lifetimes so it will retain it's warmth and charm.  Then you have the newcomers like me who go and blab about how wonderful it is and before you know it, you will have swarms of people living in here breaking up the monotony of the days. We've been here going on fifteen years, but yes, we're still considered newcomers.  Heck, Henry and I alone have increased the population of the village by seven since we've been here.  Our daughter, Krista and her family moved here shortly after we did - and recently Dave's father, Ken became a full time resident.  All we need now is get our other daughter and family to move here and we will be "self contained".  We do need to curb the growth though, so when I tell you what a wonderful life we have here, please - shhh, keep it to yourselves.

 If you google "population, Van Wyck, SC" you will find it in AmericanTowns.com. It gives the following information: Van Wyck, South Carolina is part of Lancaster County. Population for Van Wyck from the last gathering is 7059. You can view Van Wyck venues that host many Van Wyck SC events every year. Currently Van Wyck has an average listing price for homes for sale on the market of $514,000. This compares to the Lancaster County average of $183,542.  Van Wyck South Carolina has a latitude of 34.8583 and a longitude of -80.8461. Van Wyck zip codes include 29744.     I was flabergasted to learn that the population for Van Wyck was so large.  I was going to estimate about 300 - I would love to know where the other 6759 people live.  They don't live on my street.  Of course we do have what we call "Van Wyck" and then there's "Beautiful Downtown Van Wyck" where we live. 

One of the advantages of living in Van Wyck is our night life.  If you're looking for bars, fine restaurants, fireworks, etc., you may want to look elsewhere.  But take a look at one of our "event" calendars published in our church bulletin, and you will see what an exciting life we lead.  There's Van Wyck Woman's Club on the 1st Thursday night of each month which, by the way, you have to have an invitation to join in case you were thinking of popping in on us sometime :-).  Then, there's the Community Watch / Crime Prevention meeting on the 1st Tuesday night of each month - it's free for all.  There's Van Wyck Presbyterian Women's meeting on the 3rd Tuesday night, Presbyterian Men on the third Wednesday night, Yoga at the Presbyterian Church every Monday night and exercise classes every Monday and Wednesday mornings.  We have our huge annual event, the Celebrate Van Wyck Festival, our annual community yard sale, and we're the hometown of gold medal Olympian Shawn Crawford.   And if you belong to a small church like ours, you are on at least three committees which meet at least once a month.  I mean we have meetings just to schedule other meetings!  You can see why my calendar stays full and why I, uh.... have to turn down so many of your social invitations.

But wait, I've really gotten off my subject matter here.  I was going to tell you about all the good food we have at some of those meetings.  Last night was our Presbyterian Women meeting.  We have tried to make rules to only have light snacks at these meetings, but everyone ignores them.  No one wants to be the first to break the tradition.  One of the native Van Wyckians, Betty Broome, was in charge of refreshments last night.  The menu was her famous homemade chicken salad sandwiches, roasted pecans, grapes, and homemade key lime pie.  I think there were some other things too, but I tried real hard not to look at what she served because I'm on the infamous diet.  I didn't even get a plate.  I put four grapes and four toasted pecans on my napkin - pitiful!  When it's my turn to serve, I'm going to abide by the rules.  Camille told me I should serve sugar-free jello.  I can just see the headlines of the fictional Van Wyck Press now - Newcomer to Van Wyck- run out of town on a rail by angry mob for serving Jello at a Circle meeting."  Huh - uh Camille, you're always trying to get me in trouble.