The Carpet Baggers

(summer of 1989)
 
After the Civil War, with the destruction of the South,  some Northerners packed up clothing in homemade suit cases made  out of carpet and moved South looking for work in the reconstruction of the  burned out and war-torn South,  and were called “Carpet Baggers.”
 
I was working with Rockland Painting at the time when two guys from the South, one with a beard, the other with a mustache were at Paley’s Paint Store looking to pick up some work.
 
Perry the boss spoke with them in their small gray pick-up truck.  The Southerners came up north after Hurricane Hugo had hit the east coast hard.  “Humpty” and “Dumpty”  reverse Carpet Baggers, southern workers coming up North looking for work,as many former slaves did when they headed north to the Big Cities to escape a life of poverty working as share-croppers or tenant farmers – called the Great Migration.
 
They were staying at a campground, and said they could paint, but not off of ladders.   When you drink and have the shakes, it makes it hard to work off of ladders apparently.  We suspected they were gay – but not my business.  We knew they were alchy’s,  because the told they drank,  and did not work on ladders due to the shakes.
 
One day during lunch,  they told us a story.  They were painting a bedroom at a woman’s home.  She had chosen some shade of yellow.  When they finished painting, the  woman looked at the color and said,  “I would like it to be one shade lighter please.”
 
Humpty and Dumpty said,  “We can do that, but will have to charge you another $200 to do so,”  to which the woman agreed.
 
Anyone who is a house painter,   or has done any painting, will take notice that the color on the walls will change a bit when the paint is wet.  It also may look of a different color depending on if it is sunny out,  or raining out, or what time of day it is.
 
The Southern Gentlemen painters,  shut the door,  locked the door and took a two hour nap.  When they arose, the called the woman into the room and said,  “What do you think?”
 
She said,  “I love it!  It is the perfect color!”
 
The “reverse carpet baggers” from the South laughed and laughed about getting $200 for taking a nap.  They said it was a good week of  bar drinking.