Carpet Guy

A 10-foot carpet installer has been rolling out the same roll of carpet above a Westminster showroom since the 1970s. Roland A. Remnant was on the roof of Traynor's Floors & Carpet on Baltimore Boulevard (Md. 140) when CBS Baltimore visited in 2023, and the store's own history page calls him possibly the best-known guy in town.

According to the store, the family business began in 1973 and the figure went up around 1976. The store's president said the company's logo was a man pushing out a roll of carpet, because his father was an installer, and the store's history page says workmanship is the motivation of the business. The idea for a rooftop statue came, he told the Baltimore Sun in 2015, from a road trip in West Virginia in the 1970s, where he saw a big Paul Bunyan figure outside a pancake house. The sculptors had inscribed their names on the base, so he looked them up. He had expected a quote of $20,000 to $30,000 but was quoted about $2,000 to $3,000. The figure arrived on the back of a pickup truck and a crane lifted it onto the roof.