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| ELGA -- THE MILLIONAIRE TIN CAN( LADY |
(A watercolor painting by Maria Panlilio
By Maria Panlilio
I took a deep breath and inhaled the cool May breeze, the vestiges of spring lingering in the air. Good-bye Indiana, good-bye Ohio, goodbye my friends, I said internally. I was ready for my long drive to my new home--California.
I remembered that I had not said good-bye to my favorite eccentric person on earth: Elga--the tin-can lady. I couldn't leave without seeing her.
I drove thirty miles out of the way to see Elga. I found her in the back alley behind a pub in Ripley, Ohio. Hunched forward, her five-foot frame looked much smaller. She wore her favorite green sweater over a turtleneck sweater. A Cincinnati Reds baseball cap framed her rosy-cheeked face. She pulled her small flat wagon containing two tin can-filled garbage bags and parked it next to a steel cage behind a house. The two black dogs inside the cage reacted excitedly at the sight of Elga and her brown bag of treats. According to the neighbors, the dogs would starve without the 86-year old woman to feed them.
I waited till Elga finished feeding the dogs before I approached her. At that point, gloved only with a sheet of paper towel, she began to pick up dog poop from the cage, stretching her arm as far as she could from outside the steel structure.
"Hi Elga!" I called.
Sun behind me, she looked up squinting; a big smile when she recognized me. "I thought you've left for California," she said, her head bobbed as she talked. Her tremors from Parkinson's Disease were worse than ever. But for her age, she was remarkably strong--mentally and physically.
"I'm just now leaving."
"And what are you doing here? Are you lost? You're supposed to be going west, young woman." She had a big grin, as if thinking that she just made a witty remark.
"I can't leave without saying good-bye to you."
Her eyes sparkled. "Aaa, you're a sweet girl."
She continued to clean the cage while we talked. She bragged about the latest plaque she recently received from the Ohio Governor. I wondered where she was going to display that one. Her walls were already covered with awards and commendations from various government officials, hospitals and institutions.
Elga had been collecting tin cans for fifteen years since her husband died and her Parkinson's Disease started. Her daughter and only child was so ashamed for being known as the tin-can lady's daughter that she left Ripley. Tired of begging her daughter to come and see her, Elga one day marched to the Court House and legally disowned her daughter.
Not your ordinary tin can lady, Elga inherited her husband's multi-million dollar estate, which included two historical riverfront homes in Ripley. She lived in one, and let international students from the University of Cincinnati live rent-free in the other one. One of the former students named his medical clinic in India after Elga. I saw the photo of the grateful Indian doctor and his staff standing proudly in front of the modest clinic painted in yellow, blue and red. Above the door was the sign with Elga's Mansion printed in big letters.
In addition to the recycling proceeds for her tin cans, Elga donated her entire Social Security income to the local Police Department. Because of her altruistic concern for animal welfare, the police dogs received the best care through her generosity. "I wanted those dogs to have the best dental care," she had said. "Why, those dogs will never get their teeth cleaned if it weren't for my tin cans."
The first time I saw Elga, it looked as though her tiny body was going to fall into the garbage can as she stooped forward and down from the waist. Her one hand clamped the rim of the garbage can, and the other rummaged through the contents. When I noticed that her feet were not touching the ground, I rushed toward her to help. Michael, my boyfriend and a native son of Ripley, stopped me. "She'll be fine," he said. "People around here know that there's nothing in the world you can do to stop her from doing what she does."
That day, Michael introduced me to Elga, but we had to wait till she had finished her work for the day. We waited outside her mansion that overlooked the Ohio River. Directly across the river is beautiful Augusta, Kentucky where the actor George Clooney was raised. And behind the house, on top of the hill, you could see the historic Reverend Rankin's House where more than two thousand escaped slaves had sought refuge to freedom. The Rankin House inspired a novel that fueled the Underground Railroad Movement for the emancipation of the slaves.
I towered over Elga when I shook her hand. She invited us inside her home and proudly showed us her exhibit of plaques for her charity work.
A Black woman in her sixties emerged from the kitchen with a tray of cookies and milk. Elga introduced her to us as Rosa--her family's live-in help for more than thirty years. She was the grandchild of a former slave who delivered the town's mail in a beat-up carriage drawn by a blind horse. "People said he never was paid a salary," explained Elga. "He relied on a few residents to give him a hand-out, like a dime or a quarter; or sometimes, a piece of bread. That would be a good day for him."
That day marked the beginning of my friendship with Elga. Michael and I visited with her every time I made a trip to Ripley. Every Christmas, she would give us $500 each in cash, and there was no way that you could refuse it. I gave her the green wool sweater one Christmas and she wore it even in the summer. I gave her another sweater hoping she'd start wearing that instead, but no such luck. She loved that green sweater.
"You'd better get going, child," she said. "You have a long road ahead of you."
As we said our parting words, I felt nostalgic for this woman that I have admired so much. She tried to stop me when I tried to hug her. "I'm holding dog poop," she said. "You'll get your pretty jacket all dirty and smelly."
I smiled and hugged her anyway. I was not about to let anything stop me from showing her with my affection and admiration.
"Good-bye, Pearl of the Orient," she said. She could never remember my name.. She had told me once that she expected me to have a name that was a mile long and more difficult to say than Maria.
I felt a huge lump in my throat. I knew I would never see her again.
A few years later. . .
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| Maria visits Elga at the Nursing Home |
"My, you've gained weight!" she blurted out, chuckling.
I laughed. She was as sharp-minded as ever. They say Parkinson's Disease leads to Alzheimer's, but at that moment in time, she had no signs of memory loss. My goodness; she remembered how much slimmer I used to be.
In less than a year since that visit, I heard from my friend at the Ripley Historical Museum that Elga has passed on. Instead of feeling melancholy, I felt joy. Having known Elga and being considered her friend has enriched my life. What an incredible human being. I feel so privileged and honored to have known her. She is gone, but she will always be in my heart.
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EPILOGUE
Five years later, a letter mailed to my old address in Indiana dated before Elga's death reached me finally in California. It contained a few hundred dollar bills wrapped in an 8x10 xerox paper with "Pearl of the Orient" written on it. She never wrote much of anything in all the time I knew her, but I knew her penmanship; and that wasn't hers on the envelope. In another envelope were the two pictures above, with a note stating the framed original was shipped to the doctor in India and was now gracing a wall at the Elga's Mansion clinic.
