After a brief visit to Davenport, Iowa, we once again crossed into the "Land of Lincoln." Last spring, when we sent out letters to lodges across the Midwest to solicit participation, either by chance or some other force unknown, the bulk of our responses came from Illinois. Our last stop in the state was Kewanee, "Hog Capital" and home of Good's Furniture House and a juvenile correction facility.

No. 724's lodge is located downtown, across the street from a bank that houses a pair of live otters. The original building's structure was destroyed in a notorious downtown fire. The current building has literal layers of history; the first floor housed a department store and later a pharmacy (more on that below) before it was sold back to the lodge in the '90s. The upstairs houses a retro-style bar and a formal ballroom that, because of a steep flight of stairs, is now used solely for meetings.

Kewanee's Elks is only open on Friday evenings to its members, and our Friday visit coincided with a surprise birthday party. We had the pleasure of meeting with the oldest living member, who (when the Elks were in danger of losing the lodge) bought the building for his pharmacy after the department store vacated. Later, he sold the building back to the fraternity when they could afford it, keeping the Elks established in downtown Kewanee for another generation.

Rachel Gargiulo is a current student of the Museum School. Matthew Gamber (MFA '04) is currently Editor-in-Chief of Big RED and Shiny, an online arts journal for the visual arts in New England.