That was one of 3 problems. The other 2 were that I needed the 1st place to be blank in the "data" (code area) of the JCL. Finally, I broke something stupid in the initial compile call.

Arent't JCL errors FUN! There is NO WAY I would have caught that.

The guy helping me at my company is our semi-retired MF systems programmer. He's brilliant. His 2 languages of choice are assembler and PL/I. He lives somewhere down south and is on retainer to us for ongoing questions, etc.

He fixed this problem, and setup several other JCL files for me to use as examples.

The regular systems programmer is an asshole who like to see me go down in flames. Almost anytime I ask him something, his answer is both correct and useless. This way he avoids getting fired while almost never helping me. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but it seems an ongoing pattern.

He was a tape monkey who fell into the sysprog role. He's not a programmer. He certainly is not a systems programmer. He's capable of reading manuals (sometimes) and setting things up (sometimes), but that is it.