Success!
thank you Joe Ayres and quiltedsunshine for your suggestions. After a good night's sleep and a couple of cups of coffee I re-checked all the oil and grease spots, cleaned a little fuzz ball I had missed behind the bobbin case, re-threaded the machine following the diagram step-by-step and VOILA! she hummed through 100+ stitches with no problems!
I took a pic of the beautifully perfect straight stitches but I can't upload due to size limits...
thank you once again!