Two Legs Good

by Carolyn Wyman

It’s spring, that time of year when Philadelphians’ thoughts turn to flowers, baseball … and gingerbread men.

Gingerbread in spring? Yes, we know most of the world associates gingerbread with Christmas, but gingerbread men and women cookies have been a big attraction of the annual May Rittenhouse Square Flower Market festival for the past 90 years. Although the market’s flowers get top billing, its gingerbread cookies date back almost as far and were institutionalized in the late 1950s with Fidelity Trust Bank’s donation of the festival’s Hansel-and-Gretel-style wooden gingerbread house selling booth.

More than just out-of-season, gingerbread is also out-of-fashion, as anyone who has visited a bakery in the past 20 years knows.

That's exactly why it's so popular, says food-booth chair Joan Hubschman, as she stands on the enclosed porch overlooking the Schuylkill at the Market's Sedgeley Club preview party one recent Sunday afternoon nursing a drink. "You can't find gingerbread or our iced raisin bread anywhere else. People are always asking me where we get them." But Hubschman isn't telling, beyond "that we've gotten them from the same bakery on the Main Line for years." To say more might hurt booth profits and, by extension, the approximately $10,000 which the all-volunteer, nonprofit festival raises for park maintenance and children's charities annually. (This year, the four lucky recipients are Comhar Inc., the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, the Providence Center and Wheels of Wellness.)

Ginger and raisin breads aren't the only retro foods that wean Market Street white-collar workers off their usual lunchtime panini and onto the Square in mid-May. There are also those old-fashioned lemon sticks.

As late as last week, Flower Market Association member Ricki Lou Hildebrand was still searching for a candy distributor that carries the porous candy lemon sticks that are the center beam of the refreshing lemon stick "sucker," a favorite at the Market and many other old-time Philadelphia-area fairs. Stuck into a freshly cut lemon, the stick functions as a straw, transforming an otherwise unbearably sour fruit into a sweet treat. You can't buy them at Wawa.

Which is not to say the Flower Market is entirely frozen in time, foodwise. In the 'teens, the Square was transformed into a two-day tea garden. Hubschman remembers the midcentury sit-down chicken-salad luncheons. And now? "We serve fast food," Hubschman noted with a sigh.

The Rittenhouse Square Flower Market, featuring flowers, crafts, entertainment and children’s activities, Wed.-Thu., May 19-20, 8 a.m.-6 p.m., rain or shine. Rittenhouse Square, call 215-271-7149 or contact rsfma@aol.com for more information.

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