Thanks to jchuzi & dkmarsh. I read their suggestions and several others like them. There were so many caveats and side issues included on many of them that didn't apply to me that I thought it was a bit confusing. However, I got the idea that restarting while pressing down the option key would give me access to the Recovery drive. I tried it and it gave me several choices. The top one was irresistible. It says "Restore From Time Machine Backup." I had done full backups using Time Machine to both an internal hard drive and an external hard drive just before installing Mavericks. I clicked on "Restore From Time Machine Backup" and selected the external drive since I wasn't sure that the internal drive would work. The internal backup drive has nothing else on it, but I felt the external drive was a safer bet. A window came up asking me to choose which backup I wanted to use. I picked the one I made just before installing Mavericks and it went to work. It took a couple of hours to finish, but as it restarted and Mountain Lion 10.8.5 appeared on the screen, I was totally relieved. I feel liberated. Everything works. No wacky glitches to say "gotcha!"
When you consider all of the written instructions, many of which are very difficult to follow, this very simple method of restoration is amazingly easy. I hope it helps others who are considering moving to OS X 10.9. Just get a good external Time Machine backup of your present system before you venture.
Last edited by JoBoy; 11/01/13 06:28 PM.
