Chicopee, MA - Massachusetts has always been on the forefront of Masonic innovation, so Worshipful Brother Kyle Renn was confident that his idea for a new lodge would be approved.
“A bunch of us felt uncomfortable in those lodges in the Springfield area,” Kyle told The Past Bastard. “Nothing major, but we’re all in our 20s and 30s, and we just can’t get into feeling like a part of these old, historic lodges. Well, it’s not just the lodges, it’s the older members. Nothing against the older guys, but on one hand they’re complaining about the roof leaking, or the fridge that needs to be replaced, or how they have the same thing for dinner every meeting. But on the other hand, whenever you propose moving the dues up from, say, sixty or seventy bucks a year to a couple of hundred, they whine and howl about that.”
Brother Renn met up with a number of other younger members during district meetings, and they came up with an idea.
“We decided that it was just too much work to change the culture of the older lodges, so we wanted to start our own. We don’t have much money, but we figured we could meet in some free or very inexpensive places, and not worry about having the buildings falling down around us,” he told The Past Bastard. “We found a spot, got some agreements, and contacted the Grand Lodge for permission. There was surprisingly very little pushback, and we got a working charter right away. We’ve been meeting for the last six months, and I expect that we’ll get the formal charter for McDonald Lodge at the next Grand Lodge session.”
Worshipful Brother Renn and a dozen of so other brothers from around the area hold their meetings twice a month at a McDonald’s Restaurant at a shopping plaza in Chicopee. The Past Bastard asked Worshipful Brother Renn about their decision.
 |
| McDonald Lodge (Under Dispensation) is the newest lodge chartered by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. |
“I know what you’re thinking, but for us, it made perfect sense.There’s a few tables in the back corner that are perfect for seating a small group. We are intentionally keeping our lodge small; there’s about ten or twelve of us, so it’s not overly crowded,” he explained. “When you consider that half the lodges in the area barely get enough members to open, we think that this is a workable number.”
“Also, at seven to eight o’clock in the evening, it’s never crowded, and since we don’t have to discuss fixing the roof, or painting the siding, or replacing the furnace, or any of those things that take up eighty percent of the time in our old lodges, we can have a meeting, then some nice discussion, and we’re done in an hour,” Worshipful Brother Renn told The Past Bastard. “Plus, they have wifi, the coffee is decent, and we can have a festive board that won’t break our budgets.”
