It's just one of the many portraits of small-town charm that West Point offers like comfort food at a country cafe.

Two blocks away, at Wyatt-Ogg Furniture, Steven Ogg knows most of his customers by name. There's a good chance he waited on their parents and grandparents.

Like so many of his customers, Ogg grew up in this village wedged between the Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers at the tip end of King William County, about 45 miles east of Richmond.

He started work at the store when he was 13, and except for a four-year break for college, has been there ever since. That's 46 years. Same store, same town.

"I like the beauty of it," he said of West Point, a village of pretty storefronts and old homes with big porches dappled by the light that filters through the shade trees.

"But most of all," Ogg added, "I like the small-town atmosphere. Most everyone knows everybody."

Listen, and you can hear a similar refrain from most anybody in town.

"The people are friendly, and when there's a problem, they're there to help you," said Dr. Mark Neale, who practices dentistry in the Ninth Street office his father established a generation ago.

"I love West Point," he said. "I tell people all the time, if you want to raise a family in a safe, friendly community, this is the place to be."

Known for the steaming Smurfit-Stone paper mill, which represents the wealth of forest products from the nearby countryside, West Point is also home to public schools that are a source of local pride.

The town maintains an elementary, middle and high school. The West Point system is one of only two independent town school systems in the state.

"We've been recognized by Standard & Poor's as one of the top school systems in the country," Superintendent Jane Massey-Redd said. "And, we've also been recognized by Money magazine as one of the top schools in the country in an affordable place to live."

The School Board's philosophy? "Every decision we make comes back to putting the children first," Massey-Redd said.

West Point is home to 3,000 people. That's about 500 shy of the census count from the late 1800s, when the town was a busy railroad and ferryboat terminus shuttling cargo between Richmond and around the Chesapeake Bay.

"When the port was moved to Portsmouth in 1895, a third of the people in West Point left," said Ty Bland III, a former mayor who now devotes time to the fledgling West Point Historical Society.

Bland has a collection of West Point automobile tags that stretches from 1927, when the first one was issued, to 1974, before the town switched to windshield decals. He's missing only six from the series.

The locally famous Terminal Hotel, which catered to vacationers who journeyed to the town by steamboat, was destroyed in 1929, Bland said, when a liquor still hidden in one of the rooms exploded and burned the place down.

Long before that, the Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers and the vast marshes that flank their banks made the peninsula a choice place for American Indian habitation.

When English explorer Captain John Smith sailed up the York River in 1608, he encountered the Indian village of Chinquoteck. Today's visitor finds the rivers spanned by two new bridges that bring state Route 33 through town.

The last bit of the $126 million bridge construction was completed late last month when all four lanes of the new Eltham Bridge were opened to traffic. The project has sparked a downtown renewal aimed at increasing business.

"There's definitely interest," said Neal Barber, West Point's economic-development coordinator, who has been looking for someone to develop marinas and restaurants in town. "Our hope is with the new corridor along [Route 33], we'll be able to change our image from a mill town to a waterfront community. We see a very positive outlook for the future."

Marie's Place restaurant on state Route 30 underwent its own transformation about three years ago when a wheel flew off a tractor-trailer and slammed through the kitchen. That forced the closure of the former beer joint, said waitress Melissa Howard.

Marie's opened two years ago as a family restaurant. Today, a no-smoking sign hangs on the front door, and amid the décor of vintage Coca-Cola advertising is a sign reading, "No Profanity."

The Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers remain some of the cleanest Chesapeake Bay tributaries. The Mattaponi attracts the largest spring spawning run of American shad of all Virginia rivers. A Department of Game and Inland Fisheries boat ramp within sight of the Lord Delaware Bridge stays busy with fishermen.

At West Point, the Pamunkey and Mattaponi form the York River, whose hard crabs tempt diners at nearby Diggs Seafood.

West Point Mayor Jim Hudson is one of many town residents who repair to the vast freshwater marshes upstream of town to hunt ducks and wild geese.

Hudson, a lawyer, moved to West Point 31 years ago to join a law firm. He liked what he saw. "With West Point, what's not to like?" he asked.

Jim Crouch may have the most unusual view of the town. As owner of West Point Skydiving Adventures, he introduces about 1,200 people a year to sky diving, taking them up and turning them loose at 14,000 feet with an instructor.

At sky-diving altitude, Crouch can look east and see all of tidal Virginia spread before him, with the Potomac, Rappahannock and York rivers coursing parallel tracks through the countryside.

"It's kind of cool," he said, "to see all those rivers lining up and heading to the bay."