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Members of the Kittanning Elks Lodge are hoping Eliot Ness and his Untouchables won't be bursting through their doors and raiding their speakeasy Saturday night.

If they do show up, they better hope they have the correct password, or they won't be getting past the bouncers, according to Danny Shirley Jr., past exalted ruler of the Elks here.

The event has become a tradition over the past five years since Shirley and current exalted ruler Jason Krecota took on the task of refurbishing a dark, hardwood bar located in a room in the basement of the club along North Water St.

"For as long as I can remember, the room was used for storage and as a work area," Shirley said. "Most times you could barely get the door open, let alone see that there was a complete bar in there. I used the bar top as a work bench on more than one occasion."

As the pair began cleaning out the room, exposing the bar, they became curious as to its existence, Krecota said.

"It was one of those things that not too many members knew about or remembered," he said. "But we did some checking and found out that it was, in fact, a Prohibition bar, set up in the 1920s and 1930s."

The small room in the basement of the club came complete with an attached, insulated ice house, where beer kegs were brought in from street level through a window and hooked up to a tap system that was built into the floor between both rooms.

"It was a gravity system," Krecota said. "They kegs stayed in the ice house and the beer flowed through the pipe into the barroom and into the tap on the bar."

Krecota and Shirley spent quite a bit of time restoring the bar to remove years of grime and dirt and were able to being the natural wood back to life.

"It's a really beautiful old bar," Krecota said. 'We tried hard to rig up the original tap system, but there was just no way to work the system with the original pipes and stuff. It would have been neat to see it operate like it did back in that time."

After the bar restoration was complete Shirley and Krecota came up with the idea of hosting an annual speakeasy night, where members and guests would dress up like mobsters and flappers and enjoy a night out.

"The first year we did it in 2006, about half the people dressed up in costume," Shirley said. "But every since then, about 90 percent of the people dress up to come to the speakeasy."

"It's a really fun time. We have a live band, similar to the way it was back in Prohibition days, and we follow the same things that were done back then," he said. "We re-enact the announcement about Prohibition going into effect and we shut down the main bar upstairs."

Shirley said after that point, one person is given a secret password that gets passed by word of mouth for the bouncers to allow people to enter the speakeasy bar.

"We even offer drinks at the prices charged back then," Krecota said. "We did a lot of research into the whole speakeasy scene and the Prohibition law so that we could make it as authentic as the bar itself is."

Saturday's event isn't just an excuse to pretend to be Al Capone and his gang, it also doubles as a fund-raiser for the Elks Home Service Program which is an in-home nursing care management service offered to those with developmental disabilities, such as cerebral palsy.

"A portion of the proceeds go to the service program, so it makes the night even more special to know that we are helping those who need it," Shirley said.

The speakeasy event will begin for members and guests at 8 p.m. with live music by local band Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em at 9 p.m. The price is $6 for individuals and $10 for couples.

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