March/April 2005
Meet Tom Every, career recycler and creator of the Forevertron, the world’s largest scrap metal sculpture. His dual life as a scrapman and artist-persona, Dr. Evermor is as down to earth as it is out of this world.
Text and photographs by Adam Minter
The southbound highway out of Baraboo, Wis., winds and rolls through four miles of farmland before abruptly giving way to a steep mile-long descent. Below, hundreds of small square buildings sprawl across thousands of acres and surround smokeless smokestacks. At a distance, they look like a quaint New England textile town. A closer look reveals that the entire landscape is empty and as out of place as this Wisconsin highway’s sudden, steep decline. In fact, little makes sense about this odd scene until, on the left, a sign announces that the ghost town is the abandoned Badger Army Munitions Plant. A short distance farther, another sign advertises Delaney’s Surplus.
Then, ahead on the right shoulder, comes a truly odd sight—a roadside artwork of some sort, about 20 feet tall, made out of miscellaneous metal parts. It is followed by a 33-foot-high metal heart that has what looks like a giant ray gun sticking out of it. Then come several giant metal birds constructed from marching band instruments, doorknobs, chains, and other surplus.
A dirt road off the highway leads past a giant scrap metal moth and through an orange gate, approaching an open wooden fence that reveals piles of surplus steel for purchase at Delaney’s. Immediately the road straightens, offering a view in the distance of a telescope rising above the overgrown grass, then an egg-shaped capsule covered in decorative metal and surrounded by more enormous ray guns. Up close, it becomes clear that the telescope and the egg are part of a four-story, 140-foot-long structure that includes an elevated gazebo, steam engines, endless wiring, tubing, decorative grillwork, spotlights, and an astronaut decontamination chamber from the Apollo moon missions.
A sign announces: “Guinness Book of Records… World’s Largest Scrap Metal Sculpture ‘The Forevertron.’” One look at the Forevertron and you know there must be a great story behind this larger-than-life scrap-art contraption. For that story, you have to go to the man behind the Forevertron. That man is Tom Every, also known as Dr. Evermor.
I sat down with Every and his wife Eleanor—also known as Lady Eleanor, his companion of 40-plus years—at the Blue Spoon Creamery Cafe in nearby Prairie du Sac. In my pursuit to learn just what the Forevertron is all about, it quickly becomes apparent that it is not all about Art. “The art idea,” Every dismisses, “that’s a judgment thing that some people have made up.”
So what is the idea behind it? Every takes a sip of water, then offers the same explanation he has given for two decades to an array of international media, including the Discovery Channel, The History Channel, and National Public Radio.
“To begin with,” he says, “the Forevertron’s purpose is to perpetuate me into heaven in a glass ball inside a copper egg on a magnetic lightning-force beam.” He pauses, his eyes flashing beneath arched, bushy eyebrows. He smiles halfway, takes a deep breath that fills his imposing frame, and glances at Eleanor, who sits beside him with a bemused, tolerant smile.
Then, abandoning this initial farfetched explanation, Tom Every admits more reasonably, “Actually, the reason for that device is that I don’t like lawyers or politicians or the like. I’m from the scrap world, where people are honorable.”
Finding a ‘Creative Outlet’
Tom Every was born in 1938 and grew up in Brooklyn, Wis., population about 100. His father was a civil engineer, his mother worked in a bank, so “scrap was not in the family,” he says. At age 11, Every started collecting rags and newspapers with the Cub Scouts. He soon went independent and expanded his scrap scope to include iron, used tires, and anything else that seemed remotely salvageable. “I loaded my first carload of scrap at age fourteen—by hand,” he recalls. “It was sheet iron that I’d bought from local farmers.” He glances at Eleanor. She is a gentle but firm presence, her long salt-and-pepper hair framing bright eyes that monitor what Every says and the hand gestures he uses to punctuate his statements. “That’s true,” she says softly.
Through his teens, Every piled his growing scrap and surplus inventory on property owned by a friend in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, doing so put him in violation of a municipal ordinance prohibiting junkyards, and he was forced to close in 1956. An article in the Wisconsin State Journal immortalized the event, with its headline declaring: “Brooklyn Junk Man Retires at 17—After 6 Years, Law Puts Clamp on His Business.” According to the article, the resulting liquidation and auction was something to see, with Every offering “every customer a free gas mask with each purchase, from his stock of ‘26,000 gas masks.’ ... Other sale merchandise included ‘some cans of paint, all colors but the one you want.’”
Recalling that episode, Every gives an exaggerated sigh that he betrays with a smile. “I’ve always had a problem with the law.”
Eleanor nods vigorously, chiding him by noting, “You created a problem whenever you went to the DMV. Overloaded trucks, whatever.” Every chuckles at this revelation.
After liquidating his scrap business, Every moved on and graduated high school with a class of 16. “People always ask Dr. Evermor where he got his Ph.D.,” he says, “and I tell them the School of Hard Knocks and the Jewish School of Technology.” While earning those degrees, he ran a demolition business that reportedly completed more than 350 major wrecking jobs, including boiler plants, breweries, and railroad cars.
In his early thirties, though, Every began to feel disconnected from his demolition career. “I was getting a little tired of having nothing to show for what I did,” he says. “You know, you move a pile of scrap and then it’s gone. That’s it. I was sick of it.” He was still a long way from becoming Dr. Evermor, but he began to look at his demolition jobs in a different way. “When I was wrecking something, I’d ask, ‘What’s it good for?’” As he speaks, his hands begin to move rapidly with the description. “I started to look at castings for their artistic integrity, for example, and I started saving pieces that I thought were artistic or looked good.” He shrugs. “I’m a hoarder. Whether I was doing well or not, I was hoarding.”
While hoarding, Every befriended Alex Jordan Jr., builder of the House on the Rock in nearby Spring Green, Wis. Jordan’s father came up with the idea for that house after being dismissed from Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural academy. The house was originally intended to be a parody of Wright’s style. In time, it became a major Wisconsin tourist destination where visitors now pay $15 to tour narrow hallways and weirdly configured, poorly lit rooms jammed with music boxes, Tiffany lamps, and an odd assortment of knickknacks.
In later years, Jordan added other buildings and attractions to the house. Tom Every, one of Jordan’s significant collaborators, created many large-scale fantasy machines for the place, with the most notable being its carousel.
“I built the world’s largest merry-go-round,” he says. “It’s in the Guinness Book.”
Every looks back on his work with Jordan and the House on the Rock as key experiences that led to the Forevertron. “Working with Jordan gave me a creative outlet,” he says. “Instead of destroying things and not seeing anything for all my work, I had something to show.” He pauses, then adds, “It’s a different kind of challenge, and I like challenges.”
In 1976, Every faced yet another challenge: Eleanor wanted a backyard barbecue. His response? The Epicurean, a “historic backyard barbecue” and Every’s first scrap sculpture (though he dislikes calling it a sculpture due to its practical applications). He assembled the barbecue over six months from brewery parts, a copper cheese kettle, an antique fire extinguisher, and an eclectic collection of hardware, among other items.
This first creation gave rise to Every’s general principle of refusing to alter the design or integrity of any item he includes in his creations, including the Forevertron. “I don’t change shape or form. I accept the material as it is,” he explains. “That’s why my work is whimsical. It takes things to another dimension. It takes something good or beautiful, and it combines it into a mosaic to create something new.” Every pauses, then relapses into scrapspeak: “I also don’t like to build out of thin material. I like 10-gauge.”
Creating the Forevertron
The Forevertron and Dr. Evermor were born in 1983 during an unhappy period in Tom Every’s life that involved “lawyers and politicians.” All he’ll say on the matter is “governments go but metal is forever. It has value, and it also has magic.”
Despite his personal and professional troubles at the time, Every discounts the notion that the Forevertron was an escapist fantasy. Instead, he asserts, it was a large-scale continuation of the projects he’d done with Alex Jordan. The difference is that the Forevertron comes with a back-story about a 19th-century inventor named Dr. Evermor who wants to launch himself into the heavens. Thus, the Forevertron is constructed with industrial castoffs from the steam era, giving it the appearance of having been built in 1890.
In subsequent years, Every—as Dr. Evermor—built additional large-scale devices at his park to aid and celebrate the planned flight. For example, the bizarre Graviton “de-waters” the overweight Evermor so he can better take flight. The looming Overlord Master Control Unit is the computer that controls the flight. The massive Celestial Listening Ear allows folks on the ground to hear what’s occurring up in heaven. The entire installation is designed to be festive. Thus, the Epicurean will serve concessions to spectators who come to watch the Forevertron’s flight, while the Celestial Bird Band—composed of dozens of instrument-based birds of different sizes—will serenade the crowd while Evermor ascends.
The Meaning of It All
Tom Every’s property in Baraboo comes across as part sculpture garden and part scrapyard. The scrap part is evident in the property’s inventory storage area, which is located behind the Forevertron. This storage area extends more than 500 feet and has heavy-duty shelves piled high with an eclectic collection of scrap metal, including items that could be construed as decorative, artistic, or useful in an intergalactic spaceship.
Up top, fluted bed frames tangle. Below, surplus sets of wheels share space with capacitors, giant gears, grills, fencing, and large dome-like steel bulbs. In front of the racks, a large iron table that serves as Dr. Evermor’s workbench is covered with pieces of metal. It sits next to more racks that hold smaller inventory items. These racks are topped by several cat-sized insects built primarily from bullhorn speakers and doorknobs. Almost to a bug, they are turned toward what appears to be a 30-foot-tall giant silver dollar that sports propellers, antennae, and spindly 15-foot legs. This creation, dubbed the UFO, stands across the dirt road from several scrap metal Komodo dragons that sprawl for about 55 feet and seem about to attack the Forevertron. The dragons are covered in scales, small metal canisters—each of which sounds a different tone when played—and boat propellers.
“The guy at the propeller factory wouldn’t sell the propellers to me,” Every recalls. “He couldn’t understand why I wanted them.” Many scrap recyclers face this situation when trying to purchase defective, but complete, products—the manufacturers refuse to sell the products for fear they will surface on the resale market. No recycler, however, has had as unique a reason for buying such products as Tom Every. “I told the guy I wanted to put the propellers on the backs of dragons,” he recalls. That wasn’t a sufficient explanation for the propeller representative, so Every still had to prove his intentions by showing the rep several articles about him and his work. “Then I reached into my pocket,” he recounts, “and gave him the green.”
Whether making his creations from secondhand propellers or other types of scrap, Every’s philosophy is the same: “I don’t impose my ideas on the parts of my work, I just assemble them—just like people can’t impose their will on me,” he remarks. “That’s why I don’t accept commissions. The works have to come from within. They have to build themselves.”
As Every discusses his work, the line between Tom Every and Dr. Evermor is not always clear, and the identities shift constantly during our conversation. For instance, Evermor explains that “propellers have energy force or movement. They have organic force.” Then, when asked for an Evermor explanation of the role of the propellers under the Forevertron’s telescope and viewing area, Every the Scrapman answers, “It’s storage—but you put them under there and then people start asking, ‘What the hell is going on here?’” Every’s eyes widen and he laughs again, while Eleanor shakes her head with a warm smile.
Nothing seems to amuse Every more than when someone—particularly someone with a Ph.D.—takes the mythology of the Forevertron too seriously. “I’ve got a bunch of college professors making a bunch of money running all over the U.S. talking about the philosophy of Dr. Evermor,” he says. “What a bunch of s---! I’m just a small-time scrap guy from Wisconsin who used to drive a Ford truck.”
Before leaving this topic, Every can’t help but recount an anecdote: “One day,” he says, “my son, Troy, comes up to me and says, ‘Dad, all these professors are coming around wanting to buy this stuff. What’re we gonna do?” Every smiles, then recounts his answer, revealing his true scrapman nature. “And I said, ‘Look, let’s get down to brass tacks. What’s the stuff weigh?’”
According to Every, the Forevertron is still a work in progress. “I haven’t run the lights and wires on it, there are fiber optics to go on it, and another two tons of metal,” he explains. There’s also the matter of the Forevertron’s final location. Though it now sits on Delaney’s property, its intended home was across the road in the Badger Army Munitions Plant’s old compressor room. For Every, the plant’s 18 remaining compressors would have complemented the Forevertron’s steam-era aesthetic. Unfortunately, the government sold the compressors in 2002, preventing Every from completing his vision.
Despite these difficulties, Every is planning for the Forevertron’s future while fending off Delaney’s Surplus. “That salvage yard wants me to sell off my inventory because of the recent high scrap prices,” he says, shaking his head with contempt. “The prices have changed, but not me.” He gestures behind the restaurant where several of his bird sculptures grace an outdoor terrace. They are just a few of the small-scale sculptures that he has sold to private collectors, colleges, municipalities, and galleries for prices that he concedes are ludicrously low for a sculptor of growing renown (smaller pieces, for example, start at $75).
“You know, the money’s not the point of this,” he says. “I mean, there are people who come here, hold hands, dance jigs around it. They think it’s the universal portal. And who knows, maybe it is!” Eleanor smiles as she examines the just-delivered lunch bill. “But that’s the point,” Tom Every/Dr. Evermor exclaims. “What the hell is it?”
Adam Minter is a journalist based in Shanghai, where he writes about business and culture for U.S. and Chinese publications.
Meet Tom Every, career recycler and creator of the Forevertron, the world’s largest scrap metal sculpture. His dual life as a scrapman and artist-persona, Dr. Evermor is as down to earth as it is out of this world.