Tea with Queens Victoria and Mary
As tributes poured in for actress Betty White, who died on New Year’s Eve 2021, I recalled a long-ago summer afternoon when I ran into her at the Dennis Public Market on Cape Cod. Actually, White ran into me. That would have been in 1962, when White and her husband, Allen Ludden, were appearing together in a comedy at the Cape Playhouse. I was ushering at the Playhouse that summer, and after a week of performances I had learned most of White’s lines and many of her perfectly timed pauses. I was making some hard decisions at the market’s dairy cooler (chocolate or strawberry ice cream?) when White suddenly was standing beside me. “Would you happen to know where they hide the raspberry jam?” she asked, with a Sue Ann Nivens gleam in her bright blue eyes. I remember feeling like she had invited me to join her in some antic prank. A treasure hunt, perhaps, among the marmalades. I steered White down the aisle of condiments and made sure that she could find two or three other items on he