NATCHEZ — A family of friends lives on Myrtle Avenue, and Vicki Frye-Fowlkes wouldn’t have it any other way.

That’s because the front porch of the house she shares with her boyfriend, Larry Buckley, is the common gathering location for the several neighbors that are on both sides of the street.

When The Dart landed on Myrtle Avenue Saturday, it was an unusually quiet scene for the front porch, which was taken over by the four-legged friends of her neighbors.

“I’m house sitting for a few of them, so right now it’s just us,” Frye-Fowlkes said looking around at the two dogs and two cats that were slithering around the wicker furniture. “At any given time, we can have anywhere from three people to 30 people out here, and it’s always a great time.”

The gatherings are always a highlight for Frye-Fowlkes because of the unique sense of community the Myrtle Avenue residents have developed on their street.

“I call us a ‘framily’ — friends that are like family,” she said, smiling. “Family has always been really important for me and now we have all these friends that are just as close to me as my family.”

Frye-Fowlkes grew up in Winchester, Tenn., part of a large family of six children that scattered across the South later in life, including her brother who wound up moving to Natchez.

William “Sandy” Fowlkes was a past chairman of the Natchez Festival of Music, heavily involved in the community and someone Frye-Fowlkes said embodied the spirit of all things music and arts.

“Sandy and my boyfriend were actually best friends in high school and stayed good friends until he passed two years ago,” Frye-Fowlkes said. “He was a great guy.”

Realizing the important role family played in her life, Frye-Fowlkes said she’s spent the last few years after Buckley’s retirement traveling to visit family.

Those travels often take her to different parts of Tennessee, including the Knoxville and the Pigeon Forge areas, but also Texas, including the Galveston area where her sister lives.

“We’ve been all over the place since Larry retired,” Frye-Fowlkes said. “But if we’re not traveling, you’ll find us right here at home with our ‘framily.’”

A big part of her “framily” are their immediate neighbors Jim and Ashley Anderson, whose children are never too far away from the picture.

Frye-Fowlkes said the Anderson children and others along the street keep her young through the constant state of play in their fenced-in backyard area commonly referred to as the “secret garden.”

“There’s really nothing special about it, but I think the kids let their imaginations run wild with it,” she said as she pushed open a wrought-iron gate covered in vines that leads to the backyard. “We’ll play anything from football to baseball to kickball back here.

“I don’t have any children biologically, but I have plenty of kids that call me Mrs. Vicki.”

The friendly relationships between all the neighbors on the street are something Frye-Fowlkes said she values greatly and wouldn’t trade for anything.

“I just think you don’t see things like this anymore, where you have a street filled with neighbors who all know each other and look after each other,” she said. “It’s so great.”