Thank you all for the help!

When I started to really dig in, I discovered the Mandrake 8.1 I use
does indeed have some scripts in /etc/rc.d for farewall stuff! I put in
an 'echo' to print a message on boot to wee where it was coming up in.

What I saw was the rc.firewall script was executing first, but I saw
other messages that again flushed the rules and ended up with a default.
Well that default was /etc/sysconfig/iptables was being executed by
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit. I then discovered I could get the initial rule set
up and use 'service iptables save' to save then in the
/etc/sysconfig/iptables.  I left the rc.firewall as is since it doesn't
seem to hurt anything. Now I just have to continue to learn iptables to
bring up the security to a respectable level.

pete