Andreas,
Thanks for the help. For some reason I was still in non-squeak mode where I was thinking that I would need to rely on getting the help of experts instead of, *duh*, reading the code myself! I read the code for BalloonCanvas and looked at the old WatchMorph in an earlier version of squeak and I found the optimization and work around you mentioned. It takes some time to get used to have all the source available I guess!
Thanks for your help, Jeff G.