John Haymaker
There’s always odd stuff to be found in the back of closets in the Airbnbs my partner and I have booked the past few years in Portugal. Rummaging in the back of a utility closet, behind the host’s unwanted junk — a bag of dated vacuum attachments and empty packaging for an apparently defunct hairdryer — I retrieved a flamingo-pink plastic hammer with pastel stripes wrapping round the handle. I struck the hammer, ostensibly a child’s toy, against a tiled window ledge, left then right and then again. Pleated with accordion folds, the double-headed ends compressed when struck to absorb the shock and emitted whistles, sounding so abrupt and sharp they infuriated the dog upstairs. But was this just a child’s toy, I wondered? Or was it perhaps the kinky sex toy of a previous tenant? I couldn’t be sure. Showing it to my partner, we smiled at the possibilities. I banged the hammer a few more times and found it effective for relieving tension. For the next month, I left it on the tiled ledge in the utility room, and it became my go-to remedy for quick emotional release.
Then one afternoon our Airbnb host messaged us, “There’s a festival tonight downtown by the riverfront — the Festa de São João is the biggest in Porto.” I googled it. The festival is celebrated around the world six months before Christmas because it is believed St. John was born then. Celebrations around the world may include processions, lighted torches, bonfires, church services, and in northern Philippines, there’s even a ritual of bathing in carabao wallows before proceeding to church services — covered in the mud.
Porto incorporates a lot of those usual traditions, sans mud, including church services, concerts and feasts that are big on grilled sardines. Locals here once teased family and friends by tapping them with leeks and purple pompom-like garlic flowers to fend off evil spirits and bring good luck. Many continue the festivities after midnight, joining arms and walking six kilometers to the mouth of the Rebeiro Douro — some even plunging into the river and ocean for a ritual baptism. We’d later find Porto also has a very unique take on the festival — all its own.
Later that night, we headed out to the metro to join the party downtown. On the walkway, I noticed two children with hammers similar to my Airbnb find. Ah, so it is just a toy! The children delighted in the squeaks and whistles as they repeatedly struck the ground.
We entered the metro station and passed by a group of locals huddled on the platform. Then, THWAK! I felt a light conk on the noggin. I turned around. A woman among the huddle grinned devilishly, trying to conceal the pink plastic hammer she held, nearly identical to the one I found back at the Airbnb. Odd as it was to be assaulted by a total stranger in that manner, her tap was light. So I played it cool and paid her no notice, wondering if that might be part of the festivities. “Maybe we should have brought that hammer,” my partner whispered. “Nah, she probably thought she knew me,” I said.
But downtown, as we approached the Ribera Douro, we joined a jovial crowd and straightaway found ourselves subjected to sporadic, slap-happy taps on the head and the shoulders, POW! BAM! BIFF! We descended a steep descent of a hundred or more shallow granite steps, winding between tiers of centuries-old row houses with fading, crumbling façades. Rounding corners, we stepped past vendors grilling sardines.
Nearing the riverfront, I was stunned by a picture-perfect photo of the moon over a church and forgot everything else as I framed the shot. Then I felt a faint experimental tap or two, DINK! DINK! Jolted back into reality, I turned around to see a bashful toddler on her daddy’s shoulders — holding fingers of one hand in her mouth and a lime green hammer in the other. The father looked at me with apologies, fearing I might have missed my shot, which I had, or that I might be clueless about the festivities unfolding. But I couldn’t help smiling at his daughter’s innocence, just doing what she observed others doing. No harm done. But before the night was over, revelers struck my partner and me a thousand such times with a thousand such toy hammers of every color and size.
I googled for more answers about the event. Why is everyone hitting everyone? Is something pent up? In Porto, where residents don’t even greet passersby on the street — unlike residents of smaller towns who always muster a Bom Dia — it’s a stretch to think they’d tease and tap anyone they don’t know, let alone foreign residents or tourists. Yet on this night, they did. In abundance. With hammers flying every which way. It wasn’t always so.
Years earlier, in 1963, a plastics manufacturer marketed a new product in his lineup — toy hammers — to university students prepping for exams. The hammers were a hit, so to speak — the students relieved their tensions and frustrations, then continued their fun during the festival. A great benefit of the hammers was that the colored hammerheads provided a metaphoric replacement for the purple garlic flowers and the hammers didn’t have the smell of wilted leeks. So the plastic hammers caught on — so much so, the city banned the toys in 1970, reminding locals that those were not a part of the Festa São João traditions. Bear in mind that the dictatorship in Portugal didn’t end until 1974 — so their defiance was bold.
The ban, of course, created demand for plastic hammers during the festival, demand so great that street vendors soon appeared on corners, standing before mounds of the hammers — plastic, rubber and inflatables, large and small. Defiant revelers bought them en masse — and a new tradition was born.
My partner and I tired of all the conking and looked for an escape as we flowed with the crowd between rows of jam-packed restaurants and the river walk – but the only clear path was forward through a line of people on either side wielding their motley hammers with precision. As we passed, the scene was reminiscent of a fraternity hazing, hammers swinging wildly, passersby conked at every step. POW! BAM! KLUNK! CONK!
When the line paused a time or two, I played the good sport as the whacks continued. TWHACK! SLAP! Making playful eye contact with one or another of my mock attackers, I serenely reached to seize their hammers. They complied, allowing me to conk them back, BIFF! I returned their hammers with a smile and a nod, all the while readying for the next assault.
Which came quicker than expected. KABONG! An older woman, a tourist, brandishing a huge inflatable hammer, conked me hard, very hard, as if playing a game of whack-a-mole. She was either inconsiderate or seizing opportunity to unleash her inner demons.
My partner and I both had headaches after a couple of hours, just thankful we still had heads, unlike the festival’s namesake, who famously lost his. Though mostly playful, all the taps, conks and whistle sounds still took a toll. It was nothing we expected of a religious festival. My partner wanted to leave, but I wanted to see the fireworks at midnight off the bridge, the Ponte Louis I, designed by Eiffel. The bridge looks every bit like an Eiffel Tower with all its lacy, geometric lattice of ironwork and rivets suspending grand, sweeping arches — only tipped over on its side as it spans the Ribeiro Douro.
We escaped into a smallish wine bar, relieved that the bar seating remained vacant, and we could avoid the limited dining area where boisterous festivalgoers ate and drank, toy hammers on full display beside them. We relaxed into personal space and nursed our heads with wine. Shortly, two tourists arrived carrying backpacks adorned with Swedish flags and their hammers tucked in side pockets. They seemed to have sought escape as well. Directed to the bar, they edged through the narrow space behind us. As we slid our stools for them to pass, I saw both reaching for their hammers. Huh, but surely they wouldn’t — I mean, they’ve had enough too, right? Oh! But each one tapped our heads as they passed: BOP! KLUNK! We ducked and grimaced, then smiled and welcomed them. They laughed. There is no escape on this night.
Just before midnight, we exited and made our way back to the river. The alcohol dulled our sense of renewed hammer hits. In the sky over the river, we saw hot air balloons, lunch bag-sized vessels, powered by candles. In the stifling heat on this breezeless night, quite a few hadn’t readily launched. Surprisingly, amid all the hitting and strikes, true camaraderie unfolded; strangers helped strangers to launch flailing balloons, some fanning to provide lift, some relighting candles, some more practiced in the art, tossed the vessels skyward with the needed finesse.
Hundreds soon dotted the sky — some landed in the river and glowed for a few minutes before water extinguished them. Then the fireworks began against the backdrop of the Ponte Louis I and across the sky, beautifully reflected in the river’s surface.
The metro ran late on that night, and it carried us away from the hammer-wielding crowd. Outside the next day, through the window, there was no hint of the massacre that transpired; the liminal window for permission to strike others had shut, the ritual was done, and passersby paid no notice of strangers, consumed again with their cellphones or headsets or self-absorbed in their world. I eyed the hammer I had uncannily unearthed in the utility room. I had zero inclination to ever bang the hammer again. Even looking at it stressed me.
As I write, it’s almost June again, and we’re still here in Porto. The hammer still rests on the ledge. Should we choose to brave the Festa São João this year, maybe we’ll tote it along. I’ll leave you wondering, Porto. OOFF! SPLAT! THUNK! THWACK! We may be back.
John Haymaker is an LGBTQIA+ writer. His essays, fiction and Chinese-to-English translations appear widely in online and print journals, including Real Fiction Forum, Quibble Lit, The Bookends Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Cosmic Double. Find John online at https://johnhaymaker.com/.
Photos by John Haymaker
