serious question for those who do use CUPS - on my father's machine
  any file sent through CUPS results in a single blank page, whether
  sent to a printer on the local parallel port or to a new networked
  printer.  Both are PostScript printers and the files being sent are
  also PostScript.

There has been a bug in some PS implementations or in cups, hard to tell
which, surrounding page accounting.  In
/usr/pkg/libexec/cups/filter/cupsomatic, set $ps_accounting to 0 instead
of 1 and see if that helps.  I used to have to do this, but I thought it
was fixed in more recent versions.