The Iron Age: A Muscleman’s Museum, Born Out of Dreams, Now Enters Its Twilight
By Tom Keyser, Albany Times Union, N.Y.
Nov. 3–It was all a figment of his imagination:
The cannons and Revolutionary soldiers on the roof, the miniature fort and outhouse with the fake snake between the seats, the 1900s kitchen with Granny’s bloomers drying on the line and, in the back, under the handmade sign of the bald weight lifter, the Iron Man Museum.
George DeMers dreamed it all up. From a vacant, rundown house, he created this colorful and curious outpost featuring his iron collection on Route 29 in Schuylerville. But soon it will all be gone. Facing a mortgage crisis, the DeMers have put the property up for sale.
You can’t miss it when you drive by. If the 8-foot-tall wooden soldiers and American Indians on the roof don’t catch your eye, the 5-foot-6, barrel-chested man sawing wood in back will.
That’s DeMers, the weight lifter depicted on the sign above the Iron Man Museum. He is the Iron Man, a nickname earned from contradictory pursuits.
“To all the antique dealers in several counties, I’m the Iron Man because I collect irons,” DeMers says. “At the gym, they thought I was the Iron Man because of my powerlifting competitions. ‘What the hell you mean, you collect irons?’
He’s 65 and still lifts; at 59, he was benching 330 or better. At the same time, he was collecting irons. He has 620 in the jampacked Iron Man Museum — English irons from the mid-1700s, 200-year-old irons from China, charcoal-heated irons, gas-heated irons, 24-pound irons that stocky tailors used, irons pounded out by blacksmiths on anvils, irons that pressed cloth into ruffles.
They’re displayed in glass cases, mounted on beams across the ceiling, stacked from ceiling to floor on wooden shelves. And while DeMers gives a tour, a boombox in the corner plays Austrian waltzes.
He says things like: “This is the asbestos iron. The cover was lined with asbestos. It kept your iron hot a lot longer. But I guarantee you, every woman who used the asbestos iron is dead now. … It was 120 years ago.”
It’s art
It’s a free museum, and maybe 500, 600 people come through every year. Just about everybody asks their husky host: Why irons?
“Because it’s iron,” DeMers says. “I’ve been powerlifting all my life. And it’s heavy, it’s burly, it’s massive and it’s almost art. If they’re gas irons, and you get 50 different gas irons, or if they’re charcoal irons you build a fire in, or fluting irons for pleats with the unusual handles, the unusual shapes. … When they’re displayed, it’s art.”
When DeMers and his wife of 40 years, Adele, bought the place eight years ago and moved into the house in front, a museum wasn’t the motivation. A Colonial-style gift shop was. DeMers likes history, and the Saratoga battlefield is nearby. He tried to take advantage of that with a gift shop that sold such items as muskets and tricorn hats.
But with DeMers, a man of humor, energy and imagination, a gift shop wasn’t going to hold him. He had operated machines at GE and at a paper mill, worked construction and sold real estate, moving smoothly from one to the other. He saw new possibilities.
“Everything’s a progression,” he says, standing in his museum, surrounded by his irons. “When I started out, I was thrilled to have the little gift shop in this little building. Then I wanted the museum, and I expanded the gift shop. Then I went from Colonial gifts, because I found out I’m only going to sell so many tricorn hats and candles, into antiques and collectibles, which was a lot of fun, because I love antiques.”
Dressing it up
In the process, he dressed up the place.
“I started out a little at a time,” he says. “I designed the gun ports, and one day I went to the sawmill with my son and bought lumber. I spent all day building the 10-footlong gun ports, 4-foot high, and painting them. The next day, both sons came over and we painted the whole 90 feet of the front of the house brown like a fort, and put up the gun ports and cannons. When people went to work on Tuesday, it was a house. Wednesday, when they got up, it was a fort.”
DeMers wasn’t finished.
“So then I added guard towers the following week; I’m thinking it looks boring,” he says. “I put up a soldier on each end. Then, as time went by, now it’s looking blah to me again. Now I added 8-foot-tall soldiers and Indians. Then I added the sets of stocks out front. People take pictures of their kids with their heads and arms in the stocks. I want it to be fun.”
After he had his fort and museum, he invented Security Guard Earl and hung signs like this on doors and walls: “Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.” He collected phrases and posted them in the museum under the heading, “Words of Wisdom from Security Guard Earl (He stold them).”
Among them are: “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die tomorrow.”"It is never too late to be what you might have been.”"Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
DeMers combines imagination and knowledge every Friday during the summer when he dresses in Colonial clothes and gives tours at the Gen. Philip Schuyler house. Once a year, he dons his costume and speaks to local fourth-graders on 18th Century Day.
Harsh reality
But even for DeMers, there comes a time when dreams and imagination aren’t enough. Three years ago, he and his wife, needing money for taxes and such necessities as a new furnace, refinanced their property. The best terms they could get on a mortgage, DeMers says, were two years fixed and 28 years adjustable. In the first year under the adjustable, their mortgage increased $300 per month.
“It’s been fun, but reality — I don’t like to deal with it often, but every now and then you have to — reality says I can’t afford to stay here,” DeMers says.
Now, a sign that’s out of place among Security Guard Earl’s maxims sits by the roadside. “For Sale,” it reads.
An information packet in a box next to it displays photos of DeMers’ creation and reads: “$229,000 … Schuylerville landmark … Location, Location, Location! … Visually impossible to avoid.”
That’s a reduced price. It went on the market in the spring, and the market, DeMers says, is dead. Everything’s for sale, even the iron collection.
“I’ll never see the money I have in it; I know that,” DeMers says. “I have $27,000 in it. It’s worth $35,000. Somebody with eight or 10 grand will own it.”
Making furniture
But that’s OK with DeMers. It was his dream for a while, just as the gift shop and soldiers on the roof were. Now it’s time to pursue a new dream: making Adirondack furniture. He has been doing it as a hobby for years. Lately, he has turned to it as his primary source of income.
“It’s something I taught myself,” DeMers says. “I fell in love with it when I realized I could look at a handful of scrap lumber and turn it into something. I look at something and say, ‘Gee, I know what I can make with that.’
It’s his imagination at work again.
He makes pedestals, country cabinets, wine racks, combination bench seats and coat racks, shelving units, buffets, hutches, jelly cabinets, storage benches, dry sinks, tables and planters.
“It’s all a progression,” he says. “And now it’s progressing into the furniture. We want to sell this place, get out from under the mortgage, pay everything off, pay cash for a house in the country and just build my furniture. That’s what I want to do when I grow up.”
He realizes that no one is likely to keep the place the way it is. He expects it to be torn down and turned into senior housing or something.
Until then, if you stop by, DeMers will give you a tour of his Iron Man Museum or sell you a tricorn hat. And you can still take pictures of your kids in the stocks. DeMers painted on one: “Fort George Day Care.”
That’s right next to the sign that declares: “Fort George … Exact Replica of the Figment of My Imagination.”
Tom Keyser can be reached at 454-5448 or by e-mail at tkeyser@timesunion.com.
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