Ok, as a c++ guy, it looked like it's returning a string.  The documentation says "Return the current local date and time", but it's actually returning a datetime object (likely an object pointer)  initialized to the current time.  I think this is where every class inherits from a common base class which must include the __str__ method or something to that effect.  Then printing the ptr/ref to the datetime.now() object actually just call's it's __str__ method.  I get this now.

I need to study the Python inner workings to get a better sense of this, but this has helped much (my current books are more functional, but too primitive).  

Thanks again David Murray for taking the time to fully address this issue and to everyone who participated.  Issue closed, action to me to learn more python.  If anyone knows a good deeper book on it, please pass on the title.

Sincerely,
Dave