All the Busboys have Phd's in Normal, Mn.: Tales From Normal, Mn. FICTION

It's been pretty chilly up in Normal, Mn...that hotspot of bass fishing..and the guys, at least all of the regulars, over 60 yrs old mostly, all gathered last week during the rain and overcast weather...and they began to wonder....and wonder more...as they watched newscasts on the overhead black and white tv...that told of the current employment situation where students were so loaded up with student debt, when in fact most of the open jobs were in bar and restaurant wait jobs...so that in reality, most of the busboys that the fishermen knew had Phd's....They tried to think back...and ya the football players had a hard time in the remembering, but they relied on the others to help piece together the history.... Over the years from what they could remember, there were more and more jobs that required a college degree, and it became the fashion that folks pretty much understood that in order to get ahead, despite whatever the cost of the loans was, one simply had to click on the mouse and sign the electronic signature and get in debt...bigtime...it was a "Whatever it takes" moment....and the educated administrators of the colleges and universities kept saying that it was a wonderful investment...and they believed it since...well...they had never made any investments before...and they had not reached the age of "reason" yet, since the education had delayed it.. In the old days, there had been a universal belief in "lifelong education", which to the bass fishermen had meant that they could constantly learn new things about bass fishing and other hobbies and crafts that they had pursued...and home improvement had been a big part of it...now the phrase "Lifelong education" had switched to mean, lifelong indebtedness...the state of going to school forever, and because they had gradually begun to believe that knowledge that one acquired on ones own was worthless, they had totally bought into the idea that if you did not pay for it,,,,knowledge was pretty much worth zero...and the corollary...the more you paid for it...the more it was worth....and so they had forgot the old days in college when a whole room of furniture was pretty much available down on the street if one just searched a bit.... The guys were just a bit stunned in the review of this development....the term deja vu did not reflect their amazement at the state of affairs....