On the Side | In Head House, hearing market echoes

You can finger the usual suspects - failures of imagination and a casual neglect of historical treasure. But even Bernice Hamel, who heads up the Head House Conservancy, which rescued the place from disrepair 20 years ago, was stunned at the pent-up hunger for a market: "We were hugging each other; kissing each other," she said, as the opening-day crowds surged.

In Rittenhouse Square, the locals were ambivalent about their now-limping weekend market. No such restraint in the bosom of Society Hill.

They show up unshaven, kids in tow, in "Provence" T-shirts, reusable shopping bags from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's at the ready, encountering at one stand pasture-raised, free-range eggs for $5 a dozen from Walnutport, Pa., north of Allentown.

But veterans of organic and artisanal markets have no complaints about prices: Larry Becker, the Old City art dealer, was happy to fork over $3 for a bag of springy, organic greens that his wife, Heidi, later topped with stir-fried Chinese long beans from Queens Farm.

Walking the brick pavement under the gently arched, freshly resealed ceiling, you can conjure the Head House of yore: It was the "New Market" then, a spur off the main shambles (as the sheds were called) that lined colonial Market Street.

Tuesdays and Fridays were the market days, the farm wagons pulling up outside the brick piers, shoppers grazing under cover. It wasn't uncommon to find fresh raccoon or possum, bear bacon or turtle.

But the standard fare sounds strikingly similar to the Head House's current offerings - vegetables and fruit, fresh eggs and chicken, various sausages, and meat and apple pies (two of Griggstown's specialities).

Last Sunday, you could watch the carver from Los Taquitos de Puebla, the Mexican stand, take his blade to the cone of pork sweating on a vertical, rotating spit.

Spiked on the spit, trickling its juice onto the meat below, was a sunny pineapple, once the symbol in Philadelphia of bountiful trade with the West Indies, and to this day, an icon of greeting and welcome.

Talk about a sweet and undulled echo.

Head House Farmers' Market