It's working. I was making two mistakes. I had the contrast pin three go to a voltage divider. and I was unpluging the lcd and pluging it back in. After I hard wired the contrast pin to gnd, it worked great.
Here is the code I used. You will notice there are some commented stuff that isnt useful. But this works great with the schematic in the book. Thanks for all of your help.
Steve Matson
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' PICBASIC PRO program to display "Hello World" on LCD

' Define LOADER_USED to allow use of the boot loader.
' This will not affect normal program operation.
Define LOADER_USED 1

' Define LCD registers and bits

Define LCD_DREG PORTA 'Define LCD_DREG PORTA 'Define LCD_DREG PORTD
Define LCD_DBIT 0 'Define LCD_DBIT 0 'Define LCD_DBIT 4

Define LCD_RSREG PORTA 'Define LCD_RSREG PORTA 'Define LCD_RSREG PORTE
Define LCD_RSBIT 4 'Define LCD_RSBIT 4 'Define LCD_RSBIT 0

Define LCD_EREG PORTB 'Define LCD_EREG PORTB 'Define LCD_EREG PORTE
Define LCD_EBIT 3 'Define LCD_EBIT 3 'Define LCD_EBIT 1


' ADCON1 = 7 ' Set PORTA and PORTE to digital
Low PORTA.2 ' LCD R/W line low (W) 'WAS AN E
Pause 100 ' Wait for LCD to start up


loop: Lcdout $fe, 1 ' Clear screen
Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second

High PORTB.4


Lcdout "Hello" ' Display "Hello"
Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second


low PORTB.4

Lcdout $fe, $c0, "World" ' Move to line 2 and display "World"
Pause 500 ' Wait .5 second

Goto loop ' Do it forever

End