Forevertron

Sunday on the way back from Madison, we stopped at Delaney's Surplus and wandered through the junkyard into Dr. Evermore's Art Park. To save you the time of looking it up or me writing about it, this is the Wikipedia entry:

Forevertron is the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world standing 50 ft. (15,2 m.) high and 120 ft. (36,5 m.) wide. It is housed in Dr. Evermore's Art Park on Highway 12, in the town of Sumpter, in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States.

Its creator, Dr. Evermor, was born Tom Every^[1] in Brooklyn, Wisconsin and is a former demolition expert who spent decades collecting antique machinery for the sculpture and the surrounding fiction that justifies it. According to Every, Dr. Evermor is a fictional Victorian inventor who designed the Forevertron to launch himself "into the heaven on a magnetic lightning force beam." In addition to the Forevertron itself, Every/Evermor has built a tea house from which he says Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (both long dead in reality) may observe the event. The sculpture incorporates an actual decontamination chamber from the Apollo Project, as well as dynamos built by Thomas Edison, and scrap salvaged from the nearby Badger Army Ammunition Plant. Dr. Evermore's Art Park is also home to many other sculptures, including various gigantic insects and a bird symphony. The park is closed on Tuesday and Wednesdays. On the days when it is open, if the main gates are still locked the park can be accessed from the junkyard of the surplus store adjacent to it.

The whole park is an amazing collection of stuff, some of it for sale. The artist himself was there, and he and Tom had a nice long chat about a variety of things while I wandered around in amazement. I did fall in love with a group of sculptures that look like eight-foot-long snake skeletons, rearing up as though to strike you at head level. For a mere $1500, one of these could be yours! (Just the day before, one had been stolen from right outside the police station in a neighboring town where it had been on display.) I could not find a photo of the snakes online, but here is a shot of a gigantic spider you could easily walk under.

Next time I will try to get a shot of the snakes. He also has dragons -- small and ginormous, but the snakes appealed to me more, not because I like snakes but ... well, if I can get a photo, you will understand. They are just so amazingly made.

Well, maybe you'll understand.