Armchair "professionals." Certainly you’ve met a few of them in your day. They can be better baseball umpires. They can be better television news anchors. They can produce a gourmet meal better than you can. But more times than not, they never prove that they can.

Walter R. Brooks, a former resident of Roxbury, was just such an "armchair professional." But he was an exception, because he proved himself.

Back in 1915, Brooks and a friend were discussing stories in current magazines while in New York City. They decided they could do as well as those writers. Brooks and his friend wrote a short story, sold it to a publication and received $15 for it.

That was only the beginning for Walter Brooks.

Starting in the 1920s, Brooks began a long series of books about "Freddy the Pig," an adventurous, talking barnyard character. After his career, some of Brooks’ written work was the basis of the popular 1960s television sitcom, "Mr. Ed."

Brooks, an upstate New York native, was born in Rome in 1886 and attended college at the University of Rochester. He then went to New York City to attend the New York Homeopathic School of Medicine to become a doctor. However, he became more interested in literature, advertising and public relations and subsequently changed his career path.

After Brooks and his friend started generating magazine- article ideas, he wrote short stories for several publications including The Saturday Evening Post, Liberty, Esquire and Colliers. Brooks became a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.

Brooks then attempted a children’s book called "Two and Again," which introduced Freddy the Pig to young readers in 1927. The title was later changed to "Freddy Goes to Florida." Freddy was the smallest and cleverest of the pigs on the fictitious Bean Farm, somewhere in upstate New York in a town called Centerboro. Freddy quickly became the central character.

From 1927-58, Freddy was adventurous as a detective, politician, newspaper editor, magician, pilot and various other vocations or avocations.

Brooks didn’t limit himself to children for his audience. Adults enjoyed novels and short stories, including a series about Ed, the talking horse, which later led to "Mr. Ed," the television show.[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Brooks met his future wife, Anne Shepard, while in Rochester. They then went to New York City, where Anne became interested in art and took up portrait painting. It was this interest in art that primarily led the Brookses to Roxbury. Back in the late 1930s, there was an art school at Burro Ranch owned by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Hopkins Hadley. Through acquaintances in New York, the Brookses came to Roxbury so Anne could attend the art school.

From 1938 to 1948, the two spent their summers in Roxbury because they liked the area so much. They sold their New York home and moved permanently to Roxbury by 1948. They became very active in their church, Grange, reading club and several other organizations in the community.

Despite being quite popular in the 1940s and 1950s, Freddy the Pig books went out of fashion and out of print in the 1960s. They were republished in the 1990s in response to Freddy fans from far and wide who enjoyed them in their childhood. The Roxbury Library Association has a complete set of 26, prominently displayed.

Walter Brooks passed away in 1958, so he never got to see what became of his short story "Ed Takes the Pledge," which became the basis of "Mr. Ed" and aired on CBS television from 1961 to 1966.

Brooks’ 26 Freddy adventure books have done anything but collect dust in recent decades. In the late 1980s, the "Friends of Freddy" club formed and several times since has met in Roxbury or Fleischmanns on weekends about every two years. People from all over the U.S. and Canada have attended. There is a website to visit about joining the organization _ www.freddythepig.org.

This weekend: We’ll go on a road trip to the ghost town of Oneonta, Kan.

City Historian Mark Simonson’s column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com. His website is www.oneontahistorian.com.