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Charles Karault Six Flags Buffalo Chips Harleys
GEORGEANN WEARIN was riding hard across the Sandhills near Hyannis with something on her mind, but she couldn’t quite get her rope around it. When she climbed off her horse, Lefty, took off her cowgirl hat, wiped the sweat from her brow and scratched her head, it finally came to her.
As facilitator for the Sandhills Journey Scenic Byway, Wearin had been searching for a pioneering way to promote Nebraska Highway 2, and she thought of her friend, the former large animal veterinarian turned cowboy poet, musician, author and entertainer Baxter Black. With his bushy mustache, crinkled hat, bandana and narrow eyes, Black could fit the bill in any western movie production, but if he would only agree to it, he’d be using his voice on radio ads to promote an area of Nebraska he and Wearin both love.
Black and Wearin crossed trails occasionally while traveling as western entertainers and became good friends. Eleven years ago, Georgeann married Andy Wearin, who coincidentally has been a friend of Black’s since early in his career.
“He was the best man at our wedding and we stay in close contact and our families get together when our busy schedules allow,” Wearin said.
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When those schedules crossed in Denver recently, they talked about the byway. Georgeann asked “Bax” if he’d be interested in recording the ads and he agreed.
Jokingly, Wearin said the whole conversation was over a bottle of wine “or two.”
“So I called him a couple weeks later to see if he still agreed and remembered,” she said. “Thankfully, both answers were ‘yes.’ ”
Humor is a big part of the four one-minute radio ads that will play on stations along Highway 2 and also in Omaha. In one ad, Black encourages bikers traveling the byway to compare their latest tattoos with other bikers in the world’s largest hand-planted forest near Halsey. In another he says, “See wildlife from antelope to zebras,” and the byway is “so good that they could have shot the movie Oklahoma right here.”
More seriously, Black puts his poetic license to work with the heartfelt line, “The highway or the byway, or the flyway, either way, it’s my way, make it your way, Nebraska Highway 2.”
Black’s enthusiasm for the Sandhills and the Sandhills Journey Scenic Byway prompted him to suggest to Wearin that they team up to promote one of his favorite Highway 2 attractions, Carhenge, with the two of them appearing on a giant billboard.
Georgeann said she was happy to have her own image on a huge roadside signs, but Baxter wasn’t sure his image would help. He was worried it might drive visitors all the way back to Council Bluffs, Iowa. He had been told his nose was so big that if he lay on his back in the sun, people could use him to tell time.
All joking aside, without a long shadow of a doubt, it’s a good time to make your way to the byway, too.
