Troubles in Texas

Question: What do you do if the kinfolk show up only at hog-killing time, licking their chops for pork? Answer: Keep the execution secret. Question: What do you do when your husband's whittle shavings are always flying into the piecrust? Answer: Get him a "whittling room."

Big-city agony columnists like Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren might turn up their powdered noses at such rural dilemmas. But Janice Tate, 37, the go-getting wife of a Corsicana, Texas insurance agent, is making a name for herself with her home-style answers to the problems that perplex the folks down on the farm. Though she had no journalistic experience, blue-eyed Jan Tate decided last summer that she could fill a Lone Star need by advising Texas small-towners on their big-sounding Texas problems. Packing her three "kiddos" and a picnic lunch in a car, she personally visited Texas weekly editors, persuaded 44 of them to buy "The Worrier's Guide" for $1 or $2 a column. As "Jan Webster," she plows through some 120 letters a week, often squinting at an eight-page scrawl of a distressed farmwife, edits the most interesting to a printable size. A "Dear Jan" sampler:

P: "I have just moved to Texas recently and have fallen in love with a Texas man. The sad thing is that this tall, handsome Texan is already married. My mother tried to warn me that all men from Texas must be watched closely. Do you agree? I'm from Chicago." Answer: "Agreed all men from Texas must be watched. Men from Chicago also."

P: "I make the most beautiful peach pies in the world, but I never get the contest prize. A woman gets the prize who always bakes the judge a pie before judging day. I would bake a pie, but I do not believe it is fair. I have been gypped out of the prize for ten long years. What should I do?" Answer: "Get another judge."

P: "My husband, he nearly passed away last winter. I paid down payment on tombstone. He ain't dead yet. He found out, wants money back to put fender guards on car. He sore mad. What I do?" Answer: "Demand your money back."

Amazed at the response to her column and planning to sign up more papers, Jan Tate says of her work: "Actually, Texas problems aren't any bigger than anybody else's. Texans just think they are."

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