When your parents are as poor as your grades

When your parents are as poor as your grades college is a vacation you will never take. Nonetheless, the group of seniors agreed to meet under the old oak tree they have been climbing since grade school. Tomorrow they would scatter across America to attend college. Some would go west, some east, some south and some would go nowhere but never again would the group all return to this or any other tree.

For those leaving the town they grew up in tonight was full of anticipation and the promise of being hundreds of miles away from their parents for months on end. For them the glow of the sky symbolized the rosy future to come. For those going nowhere it was the end of summer and the beginning of work. For them tonight was just another night and tomorrow would be the first day at the last job they’d ever have.