I resupped everything, and gave ncurses another try, and it still fails
at the same place, viz:

cc -I../progs -I. -DNDEBUG -I. -I../include -I/usr/pkg/include
-DHAVE_CONFIG_H -O2 -c ../progs/dump_entry.c  -fPIC -DPIC -o
.libs/dump_entry.lo
cc -I../progs -I. -DNDEBUG -I. -I../include -I/usr/pkg/include
-DHAVE_CONFIG_H -O2 -c ../progs/dump_entry.c -o dump_entry.o >/dev/null
2>&1
mv -f .libs/dump_entry.lo dump_entry.lo
/usr/pkg/bin/libtool cc ../obj_lo/tic.o  ../obj_lo/dump_entry.o -L../lib
-L/usr/pkg/lib ../lib/libncurses.la   -Wl,-R/usr/pkg/lib -L/usr/pkg/lib
-Wl,-R/usr/pkg/lib -L/usr/pkg/lib -o tic
mkdir .libs
cc ../obj_lo/tic.o ../obj_lo/dump_entry.o -L../lib -L/usr/pkg/lib
-L../lib/.libs -lncurses -Wl,-R/usr/pkg/lib -L/usr/pkg/lib
-Wl,-R/usr/pkg/lib -L/usr/pkg/lib -o .libs/tic -R/usr/pkg/lib
../obj_lo/tic.o: Undefined symbol `__nc_doalloc' referenced from text
segment
../obj_lo/tic.o: Undefined symbol `__nc_doalloc' referenced from text
segment
../obj_lo/tic.o: Undefined symbol `__nc_basename' referenced from text
segment
../obj_lo/tic.o: Undefined symbol `_use_extended_names' referenced from
text segment
../obj_lo/tic.o: Undefined symbol `_curses_version' referenced from text
segment
../obj_lo/tic.o: Undefined symbol `__nc_disable_period' referenced from
text segment
...
could I have some out of date tool or lib?
Any suggestions? lots of things use ncurses, this is getting
frustrating.

Brad