Found the problem. I had previously intuited that I just didn't know where to put the menu.lst file (and whether or not the name was menu.lst -- "list" or menu.1st -- "first") so I made one menu.lst in the /boot directory and sym links everywhere I could think of to get grub to find it.

The subtle problem is that I used the absolute filename ( menu.lst --> /boot/menu.lst ) for the link targets. Mistake, grub finds the files differently then does linux once its running (I guess). I changed the link targets to relative references ( menu.lst --> ../menu.lst ) and now it works like a charm.

Thanks for the help guys.

--Robert