It sort of is/was a private club - they would have a lodge, functionally sometimes like a tavern, they might have a liquor license, and membership was fairly controlled/via word of mouth and voting by the existing members. Often members would do business deals, help each other if someone say lost a job, or helped out with things in the community.

Its not a great example for a model that would work now as a huge part was how exclusionary it was - white/male/believe in god/not a commie etc. - society has moved on somewhat from that era.

Still there’s a sort of sense of place that you get when actually involved in a community that is in a local area - I hope we can start to figure out how to do things more locally again.