Slurpees, Greeks and Muscle Cars

Baby Chris with my uncle and his Torana

My love affair with cars started before I could walk and before I was even born, apparently.

Back in the '80s, my dad and his mates used to head down to the drag races in St Kilda. My mum worked at the 7-Eleven there, fresh out of high school. Dad would stop in for Slurpee's, and one day, he summed up the courage to ask her out. She said yes. And here I am, decades later, typing out stories from my life in Tiruvannamalai.

My dad had a green LH Torana. He loved that car.

I still remember being a young kid, watching him clean it as he prepared to sell it. He didn’t want to but felt like he had to. He’d made the decision to let it go to a work colleague. I said, “Dad, don’t sell the car.”

“I HAVE TO,” he yelled. “I HAVE NO CHOICE.”

He was suffering. And he should’ve listened to me.

He sold it for peanuts and regretted it for the rest of his life.

To this day, it’s not allowed to be spoken about. If it ever comes up, he looks like he’s about to cry.

Years later, I came home one day to find that Mum had agreed to let him buy a car to fix up supposedly with our help. But really, he ended up doing it on his own. He bought a ZD ‘69 Fairlane.

He’d come in and ask if I could help hold something or give him a hand, and I’d usually just want to go back inside.

“Can I go now?”

He’d pause… then say, “Yeah, you can.”

Once I got my license, I used to ask if I could drive the Fairlane.

“No,” he’d say.

“But you don’t drive it. Why can’t I?”

“Nope. No way.”

“No worries,” I’d shrug.

But eventually, I had the means and the desire, so I bought my own car.

When I arrived at my parents’ house with it, they weren’t all that thrilled.

But I could tell… deep down, my dad didn’t really mind.

I had a list of things to fix, so I just started working it out myself.

One day, he came home from work and found me working on the car.

“What are you doing?”

“I changed this, and fixed that,” I said.

He was shocked I could do anything on my own.

Greek parents, you know?

He ended up helping me with some more complex things, and slowly, it brought us closer together.

When my Yiayia passed away, my mum and uncle sold her house. The car had to come out of her garage, so we put it under a tarp at my parents’ place.

My uncle still jokes that he’s taking it out to do burnouts.

Honestly, I don’t care if he did. He’d just have to buy new tyres.

Every month I drop the same line in the Chris Hatzis International Worldwide Fan Club family group chat:

“Can someone start my car?”

And my dad, who once wouldn’t let me near his, always replies:

“I will, Chris”

It’s our way of staying connected.

A father, a son, and a muscle car… still rumbling quietly in the background.