What do you call the rear compartment of a station wagon or minivan? Many know it as the way back (or wayback), not to be confused with the regular back, which is more likely to have seat belts. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Way Back”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name’s Maureen. I’m in Berlin, Maryland.
Hi, Maureen. Welcome to the show.
Hello, Maureen.
Well, I’m curious about something. Growing up and since I’ve called the extreme, or I guess the cargo area of a station wagon, I know there aren’t many of them still on the road, but I’ve got one, the way back. And I always called it that, and when I use that term with my kids, they laugh at me and say, which is nothing new, by the way, but they laugh at me and say no one else calls it that. And I’m wondering, is that true? I mean, is it something my family made up calling it the way back? Or is that something that’s actually out there in legitimate phrase? In which case, ha, my kids.
Since when have you been using the term?
Childhood. Back when more people drove station wagons than do now.
70s, 80s?
Thank you.
I don’t know. Well, like 60s.
60s, okay. And, you know, pre-seatbelts so you would sit back there. That was like the prized place to sit on a long family trip because nobody could reach you.
Right, exactly.
Well, Maureen, do you have something riding on this? Do the kids have to do chores for a week if you’re right?
Oh, man, why didn’t I plan for this? No, no such luck.
Nothing, huh?
Well, a mother’s gloating can be very powerful.
That’s true. You know, and trust me, I know how, and they know that, so it’ll work.
So you’re telling me it’s actually somewhere.
Yeah, Martha’s about to equip you fully for motherhood here.
Yay!
Well, I don’t know about that, but you’re right. I mean, I’ve heard Wayback used.
I don’t know if there’s any…
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah. I don’t know if there’s any particular regional…
From your childhood?
Yes.
Okay. Yes. Yes, we didn’t use…
Yeah, you’re welcome. We didn’t use Wayback. We did have a station wagon, but we called it the Backback 2.
The Backback?
No, the Backback 2.
Oh, the Backback 2. Put it in the Backback 2. And the only reason we did is because that was a family word. My little brother just decided that it was the Backback 2.
Like T-W-O, T-O-O?
He couldn’t spell.
Probably before he could spell, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the Backback 2, I mean, I will always forever refer to the last part of the station wagon as a Backback 2.
But you do see way back from time to time. In fact, it’s in your double-tongued dictionary online on our website.
That’s right, yeah. Your collection of slang. I found a citation for it, as a matter of fact, and I was kind of surprised, and so I recorded it. Did a little noodling around and found that people are reporting having used this in their childhoods from the 60s and 70s. It’s not incredibly common. It shows up in some specialty dictionaries like Paul Dixon’s family words. But even there, he reports, though, that numerous families report it.
Yeah.
So they think that it’s their own family word, but it’s actually more widespread than that.
Yeah.
Cool, right?
So you’re telling me that it was our families, but we’re not so special.
You’re still special. You’re very special.
I know, I know. I’m teasing. But you’re part of a small group of people that use the word Wayback. If you had people who use the word Wayback convention, it would not fill a small town.
And there’d be a lot of station wagons.
There’d be lots of station wagons in the parking lot, right?
That’s right. Or estate cars, as the British call them.
Yeah. Maureen, there were five kids in my family growing up. My mother had a Pinto, and I swear she and the five of us would cram in there on Avon runs, and I would be the one in the back. And I was the tallest one. I don’t know how that worked out that way, but I called it the hatch area because I’m like, in the back of this bright red Pinto.
No, green Pinto. It was a green Pinto. And I was under the big window. But I think it was my space. I owned it. And that was kind of the nice thing about it. I didn’t have to have brotherly elbows or sisterly feet poking me.
Well, there were five of us, too, and I’m really glad we had a station wagon now that you mentioned all this.
So, Maureen, you can go back to your kids and tell them you’re right and we said so.
Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, take care, Maureen. Thanks for calling.
Take care, guys.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
And we’ve got to put the word out. Since Wayback is so rare, we’ve got to ask everyone else. Do you use Wayback to describe the back of a station wagon or a minivan?
I have seen it used for a minivan.
Yes. The area in the back where you put the groceries or the luggage, that sort of thing.
Yeah, the part that’s way back in the vehicle.
The part that’s way back. If you use that, give us a call, 877-929-9673. Tell us what is wrong with your family. No, I mean, tell us exactly why you use it. When you use it, where you live, that sort of thing. And while you’re at it, send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.
This takes me back – yes, “way back”! We called the back of our humongous, lumbering station wagon the “way back” when I was growing up in South Dakota. No seat belts, far from supervising eyes (even facing away from our parents) and sticking our bare feet out the back window; sounds like crazy license today, but it was the norm, and we loved it! Thanks for the delicious, long-forgotten summer memory.
I once rode in a “way back” in the mid 60s returning from two weeks at Summer camp. Their station-wagon had a seat that faced rearward. The first and only time in my life I’ve been car sick.
We called it the “back back,” and yes, it was the favorite place to sit because of the freedom from parental control that one enjoyed there. I’ve never heard “wayback” used for that special place, but I wonder if it’s related to the “Wayback Machine” on the “Mr. Peabody” segment of the Rocky & Bullwinkle//Rocky and His Friends TV show. Mr. Peabody was a brilliant talking dog (a beagle, as I recall) who had a professorial air and a pet boy, Sherman; together they would visit famous people in history, using their Wayback Machine…I just googled “Mister Peabody,” and learned that it’s actually spelled WABAC, which is supposed to be “a take-off on early computer acronyms such as UNIVAC and ENIAC.”
We’ve always used “way back” in my family. My mom’s family is from Wyoming via Indiana, and my dad’s family is from Wyoming via South Dakota. I’m currently in Minnesota.
We called ours the “back back” as well. I don’t remember noticing what anyone else called it in the various places we lived growing up, so I don’t have any sense of where it came from.
My family always call the back area of our Station Wagons, the “Wayback”. Similar to a previous poster, I also wondered if it had a Rocky & Bullwinkle connection. Originally, I grew up in the eastern part of New York State, adjacent to the Massachusetts border.
We called that space in our station wagon the “way back” too. It was the 70’s, in Florida, but mom & dad were from eastern MA and western PA, respectively.
And Grant & I were apparently living in parallel universes…my folks traded that station wagon in on a Pinto (yes, a red one!), and my mom was an Avon Lady. So when the three of us kids would pile in and do Avon runs with her, you wanted to be the one in the “way back”. Because that’s where the orders and “door bags” were, and all you had to do is hand them over the seat, while the others had to take them up to the houses. But mom made sure we took turns. So that was a real hot bargaining commodity between us kids — usually involving doing one person’s chores for their turn in the “way back”.
Ahhh, memories!
I grew up in South Dakota in the 70s and we always called the back of our station wagon the “way back”.
I grew up in central New York during the ’90s and my family used this term. We either had vans or SUVs, not many cars with trunks. That may be the reason for our use of “way back.”
Way back! Yes! I grew up in Arizona in the 1960’s and we called it the way back. But ours was a VW bug, not a station wagon. Still, we piled into it just as if it were a station wagon. Two parents and 4 little girls, with the lucky girl riding in the “way back.”
(My parents were raised in the Eastern US, in Pennsylvania and the DC area)
When I was a kid in New Jersey in the late 60’s and early 70’s, we referred to the sunken storage area behind the back seat of our Volkswagen Bug as the ‘way back’. I was able to lie down in that space until I was about 6 or 7 years old when I outgrew it. It was perfect for sleeping when we were driving at night. This was back before there were seatbelt laws requiring everyone in the vehicle to be strapped in. The rear window was angled just right so you could look up towards the sky and look at the stars.
Ha! We used “way back” in our family, too. It wasn’t necessarily for a station wagon either. If anything had a space behind the back seat, that was the way back. But to be honest, as a child, I always thought it had something to do with the WABAC machine from Rocky and Bullwinkle!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WABAC_machine