I unchecked the "Search Customer List" option in the Setup ->Company Setup screen and it now shows the drop down.  I missed this because I never looked in the company setup, just tried to follow the rabbit trail for Customer operations in the Sales directory. 

And yes, it is in black and white, plain as day, in the Wiki "Add and Manage Customers" near the bottom.

Thank you for taking the time to give me a complete (and now obvious) answer.

Short Name and Name in List   
Search Item List   
Search Customer List   
Search Supplier List   

Untick Search Customer List    Update and you will see your customers
Or to use the search, tap the space bar enter the 1st character of the customer you are searching for.

Its all in the Wiki

Started by selecting Sales -> Add and Manage Customers then entering a customer which shows the short name branch being created.

Select "new customer" and the list collapses to just "new customer" and never displays the short names ever.  I can exit the program and and re-login and go to the customers screen and the only option is "new customer".  When I checked the MySQL (Server version: 5.5.59-0+deb7u1-log - (Debian) Protocol version: 10) using phpMyAdmin, the data is in the four tables ( 0_crm_contacts, 0_cust_branch,  0_crm_persons,  0_debtors_master table).

No errors, just the sql select statement of:

SELECT debtor_no, debtor_ref, name, curr_code, inactive FROM 0_debtors_master  WHERE (debtor_no='') ORDER BY debtor_ref

in the list of sql statements showing at the bottom of the screen.

Can anyone point me in the direction to troubleshoot this?