Ed Arbo of Charlotte, known as "Flying Ed" or the "Electrolux Man," has earned the titles after 62 years of doing both successfully. He is still flying at 89 years old, and he still passes the required physical. A few weeks ago he put his 1948 airplane away for the winter into the hangar built into the first floor of his house.
     Arbo has had a keen interest in flying ever since his childhood days living in Brownville, where his parents owned a prairie airstrip alongside their home. Barnstorming pilots often flew into the airport flying their biplanes, and they put on shows and took people up for flights. As soon as they finished and parked their planes, young Arbo climbed up into the pilot's seat and manned the controls, pretending that he was flying the plane. He thinks he was seven years old when he was first taken up on a real flight by one of the pilots.
     Although his father owned the airport, his father was not a pilot. Arbo didn't learn to fly until he was off on his own. He joined the Army in 1942, and in 1945 he was stationed in Rochester, N.Y., where he took lessons in a piper cub. The lessons cost a total of $250, and he remarks that these days flying lessons can cost $150 an hour.
Upon completion of his Army service, he moved to LaGrange, where he was trying to run his own airport. He was not making enough to pay the bills, so he also cut wood to make extra money. During this time, an Electrolux salesman visited him. "I was starving to death, and a salesman sold me a vacuum cleaner in a half hour. I couldn't afford it, but he got me to buy it anyway." Thinking about it, Arbo decided he was in the wrong business. He contacted the regional Electrolux manager in Portland, and he was on his way to a second career as an Electrolux salesman.
     Fearing failure as a salesman, he was afraid of trying to sell in his local area, so he drove down to Bangor to sell the cleaners. It was slow going at first for many days he did not sell a single vacuum cleaner. One day he was on his way home from Bangor, and he stopped at a restaurant and tried to sell the owner a vacuum cleaner. They didn't want one but mentioned that the people in the house next door were looking to buy one. Arbo went over and knocked on the door and immediately went into his sales talk telling them everything he knew about the Electrolux. The couple kept asking about the cost. But Arbo was not finished with the demonstration, and after knocking over a pot under a bed, the lady asked for the umpteenth time how much it cost. They bought the vacuum and told Arbo to get out before he wrecked anything else.
      From then on, his selling skills continued to improve. Arbo has been a successful Electrolux salesman for over 60 years. He says the secret is "work hard and talk to a lot of people." He used to demonstrate the cleaners five or six times before getting a sale. "Today I only have to demonstrate once or twice to get a sale. Now I can read people. It takes awhile to learn the secret."

A flying life
     Arbo's wife, Maxine, hailed from Cooper, so they decided to move to the Cooper area. First they bought a place in Meddybemps, but in 1968 they found their current property in Charlotte. The property included blueberry fields, and Arbo saw that the blueberry fields could be turned into a landing strip. He was following his father's footsteps, having a landing field beside the house. Arbo built his own grader and pulled the grader back and forth over the area until it was completely flat. Arbo's own airstrip is 1,900 feet long and 30 feet wide with a grass surface.
     Arbo and his wife raised three children, Scott Arbo, Tammi Smith and Diane James, at their Charlotte home. None of them have become pilots. Maxine had a successful career as a public health nurse in the area.
     Arbo purchased his first plane in 1946. Over the years he has owned six planes, of which two were biplanes. His fifth plane was a twoseater Piper Cub, the only one he ever dented. The Arbos had come back from a winter stay in Florida, and he thought the runway had dried out for the spring/summer season and went up for a flight. It had not dried enough. When he came down for a landing the wheels hit a soft spot on the runway and the plane flipped over. Arbo was trapped, hanging upside down in his plane. He could not get the seatbelt unbuckled, and there was the smell of gas everywhere. Fortunately, his son lived nearby and had heard the plane descending. He had gone to the window to watch, saw the plane flip, and ran over to help his dad. He unbuckled the seatbelt, and his father fell to the roof of the plane. Arbo was able to walk away, but he did have three broken ribs and for two hours he had double vision. His vision soon cleared and his ribs eventually healed, but the plane was in much worse shape. With his tractor, Arbo flipped the plane back to right side up, but the propeller was broken and the tail was all smashed up. Arbo put the damaged plane up for sale and sold it to a mechanic in Massachusetts. Sometime later he saw the plane, and it had been repaired and was as good as new without any sign of having been in an accident.
     In 1968 Arbo bought his latest plane, a 1948 AeroncaSedan. Only about 500 of these fourseater planes were ever made. This plane can run on auto gasoline, which is from $1 to $1.50 less costly than aviation fuel. Arbo needs to go to Canada to buy his auto gasoline, since the gasoline sold in the U.S. currently has ethanol mixed in with it. Ethanol ruins plane engines, and thus the gasoline currently sold in the U.S. cannot be used in the airplanes that were made to fly on auto gasoline. He notes that newer planes cannot run on auto gasoline and that the required 100octane aviation fuel may be purchased locally at the Eastport and Princeton airports.
     Arbo flies to Eastport often. A favorite activity has been to fly his plane for the Fourth of July pancake breakfast, which he did this summer.
     He has logged more than 3,000 flying hours. His longest flight has been to the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) annual convention and flyin, the world's largest annual gathering of aviation enthusiasts air show held in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. During the air show, the airport's control tower is the busiest control tower in the world. Arbo has made four trips to the show, a flight that requires five to six refueling stops, and two days to complete.
     This winter the Arbos are staying in Charlotte. He says the drive to Florida is a little too much, especially with a dog and a cat. Previous winters they spent in Florida, and Arbo had the use of planes owned by friends down there.
     This winter he will continue to work on a book he is writing about his vacuum cleaner career. While he has not finished the book yet, he has already selected the book's title, Ten Tthousand Housewives Said Yes to Me.