I watched American Graffiti (incidentally, the film that made George Lucas the money that enabled him to shoot Star Wars a few years later) and noticed that several characters in the film (which is set in California) make references to a high school graduate going “back East” to college.
Is this (or was it in the past) common usage in spoken American? I realise, of course, that the East Coast is where the U.S. as a country was founded. But I would have thought that by the time the film was set (early 1960s), this fact would not have been in the constant awareness of people born and raised in other parts of the country to such an extent as to make them think instinctively that a trip to the East Coast constitutes a return to some kind of home or origin.
It may have been a typical reference in California because of a large population who were born in states to the east. California is just starting to lose population now after a long history of growth from Easterners. So ‘back East’ may have been a common way to refer to it even for younger people who had been born on the west coast.
Growing up primarily in the 80s and 90s and on the east coast, I always heard “out west” and “back east” to reference to the west or east coasts. Eg “that band is popular out west but hasn’t toured yet back east”, regardless of where the band might have been from.
Even when we moved to California in the mid-1990s, I heard locals say “back east” as a general term. Eg “In and Out burgers are popular out west, but there are no franchises back east.”
I think it’s roots were in westward expansion- you headed out west, and the folks at home were back East.
Can’t say if it’s common terminology still, but it was in the past.
I grew up in California, well after the period portrayed in American Graffiti, and “back East” sounds right to me.
Some of my family goes back four generations in California, so it’s not like I identify with the east coast as being my origin. It’s just what we said. It makes about as much sense as the folks “back East” saying they’re flying to “the Coast”.
It’s been a common phrase in California as long as I can remember. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, almost all of my peers were first or second generation Californians. “Back East” would have made perfect sense coming from their parents or grandparents.
“Back east” is more than just a term of origin. It also connoted a difference in culture and attitude. As in, we do things one way here in California and they do it differently back east.
Since the growth of population in the south and southwest has exploded since the early 60s, only us oldies remember how dominant the east was at that time. Very roughly speaking, the eastern time zone held half the population, central had a quarter, pacific an eighth, and mountain a sixteenth. The power centers of virtually everything that made up American society were in the east. Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard’s characters were going “back east” to college, because that’s where all the prestige colleges were.
Car culture, though, was far huger in California than elsewhere. You couldn’t make such a movie set elsewhere. Lucas was referencing a feeling of “us” against all of “them” with the “us” being the rise of a superior new culture.
I was born in California in the 80s as a third generation Californian and “back East” is how I think of the East coast. Thought I’d probably refer to most of the Mid-west as back east as well possibly as far west as St. Louis. It’s a different world and a different culture but definitely refers to North of Maryland. The South is Maryland South and West to Louisiana.
All depends on where you are looking from, I guess. In California, the plains are just an inconsequential blur, hence are lumped with all the other “east of here” states. It took me a long time to appreciate the Midwest (the northern parts anyway).
I think it’s still a current term. I’ve heard (in Minnesota) it used by multiple people from the northeasternish U.S. (sorry, I can’t remember specifically where they were from, probably because they kept just saying they were “from back east” ). They weren’t using it in the sense of “I came here two years ago, and this weekend I’m going back east.” It was used like a nickname for the region, as in, “Back east, Columbus Day is a bigger deal than here in Minnesota.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone describe themselves as being from “back west,” or any other direction. I also don’t think I’ve ever heard someone from, say, Wisconsin describe their home as “back east,” even though Wisconsin is east of Minnesota. Only people from the northern part of the east U.S. coast.
I’m reminded of the “Murder, She Wrote” episode where Mainers calling Maine “down east” was a major plot point.
In Maine “Down East” isn’t a general term for the eastern U.S., it is actually a very local colloquialism that refers to an actual, specific geographic region of Maine:
Yeah, so the movie is set in 1962, and while that’s long enough ago even I don’t have much memory of it, for people coming into adulthood at that time this strong “East-dominance” in the “national culture”, juxtaposed with the unique Pacific / West culture that they’d have grown up with, would’ve been a strong thing. California was a populous state even in 1962 obviously, but a lot of the “organs” of national cultural relevance had yet to shift to the West. The big exception of course being Hollywood.
Baseball is a nice representative of this–baseball was the unchallenged King of sports in America in the early 1960s, and yet it wasn’t until just 1958 that two West coast MLB teams were established–the New York Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, and the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles that same year. Before that West Coasters had to rely on following the “Pacific Coast League”, there was a time when the money, player quality and etc in the PCL was starting to approach a level where it was arguably forming into a “third major league” (and it’s been suggested part of the desire in finally establishing some true West Coast teams was to cut that off at the pass so to speak.)
Also in terms of saying “Back East”, California in the 60s, and for the few decades after, had a lot structurally in common with modern day Florida…in Florida these days a common joke is “no one in Florida is from Florida”, which is obviously not true, but it highlights that a large % of the state were born elsewhere and had moved to Florida later on. California grew at a huge rate in the last 4 decades of the 20th century with a significant part of its growth fueled by internal migration from people “back east” moving “out west.” It would not be at all unusual for the personal family narrative of two 18-20 somethings in California in the early 1960s to match this narrative.
). They weren’t using it in the sense of “I came here two years ago, and this weekend I’m going back east.” It was used like a nickname for the region, as in, “Back east, Columbus Day is a bigger deal than here in Minnesota.”