Just wanted to thank everyone that suggested solutions to this problem.  It appeared to be just a bad cable, as I had the client build a cable for his hardware setup, and the code ran fine, and then HIS client....was sent another set of hardware, complete with a 'good' cable and its running fine.  The cable is about 35" long, just individual wires (18AWG) and then daisy chained to 3 other boards, about 6" long on each run.  I did suggest they use something like CAT5 for the final installation.  But all is well...short of some other code bugs but the I2C is running like it should...
   
  Again, thanks to everyone that did take some time to respond and suggest.

  
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