Waltrip’s wonder

With help from a Columbus art student and a Missouri crop cutter, Hartville-area farmer-turned-entrepreneur Bill Bakan has fashioned a corn maze complete with the NASCAR and NAPA Auto Parts logos and Michael Waltrip’s No. 15 car.
The only thing missing from the field was Waltrip himself, but that changed when the driver visited Bakan’s operation Aug. 23.
Waltrip’s helicopter circled three times before it landed to give the North Carolina native a glimpse of the layout. After meeting the Bakan family, the man said the field was “pretty amazing” and was something he’d sure like to have found accidentally from the air. Waltrip also said he thought initial photos of the maze he saw were fakes and digitally enhanced. He didn’t think the cornfield really existed, he admitted.
Waltrip also looked around the rest of the farm and got a chance to shoot muskmelons from Maize Valley’s pumpkin cannon. Bakan said he and his family were “pleased as punch” to have Waltrip visit and presented the driver with a framed aerial view of the maze.