NATCHEZ — D’Issac Terrell is known as “Baby D” by his friends, and he’s only a short walk away from sitting in a circle and shooting the breeze with them.

When The Dart landed on the corner of Cloverdale and Lower Woodville roads Thursday afternoon, Terrell was sitting around a fire with several other friends of his.

Decked from head to toe in hunting attire, Terrell said he was only trying to keep warm. There were no deer taken Thursday.

“We’d have had the pots and the grill cooking if we had hunted,” Terrell said.

For as long as anyone can remember, people from all across town have been stopping by almost every day to visit at the corner of Cloverdale and Lower Woodville. For Corey Phipps, the area requires him to walk around carefully, as he had to pull six tacks from his shoes.

“Wait, hold up — now there’s seven,” Phipps exclaimed as he spotted yet another tack wedged into the bottom of his shoe. “Let me get some of these staples out of here, too. There’s no telling what’s in there.”

Among other things, the gathering place serves as somewhere people can swap stories. In Phipps’ case, he recalled the time when he lost one of the toes on his left foot. It was the fourth toe from the right, and he told the story by counting his toes using eenie, meenie, miney, mo.

“I lost mo,” Phipps explained. “I was shopping in K-Mart in 1986, and a cabinet fell on it. They gave me a job after that. God works in mysterious ways.”

A Natchez native, Phipps had been living in Memphis before moving back two months ago when his father died Oct. 14. Since then, he’s been joining other locals at the gathering spot.

“It’s a nice, friendly area,” Phipps said. “People from all across town come here, because this is the place to be.”

Local Margaret Galtney said she lives up the street and has been joining the others for eight years.

“I come out here to relax my mind from work and be around my relatives and stuff,” Galtney said. “We sit around and talk about old times.”

They also watch the road, and Galtney recalls one time where someone came around the corner too fast, prompting everyone to jump up in case the car careened into their gathering area. Ultimately, though, the car didn’t harm anyone.

“People around here drive too fast,” Galtney said.

Terrell, a 47-year resident of Natchez, said the spot has seen many people come and go through the years.

“It’s a nice place to hang out and have fun — and stay out of trouble,” he said.