Thanks for the responses. I apologize for the delay getting back to you, busy with other things. Hopefully this email will not create a new thread, as I hadn't yet subscribed to the list at the time I sent the original email or by the time it was responded to.
As an FYI, my normal package manager is synaptic, and /etc/apt/sources.list does have an entry for backports. Using synaptic is where I initially encountered this issue. I had also tried apt-get via the command line with the same results. After reading both replies(Andrei and Salman) to my original email, I'm surprised I hadn't run into this issue before. I believe I may have once before with a small package, but at the time I didn't really need it and was distracted by something else so I moved on and never investigated at that time. I'm more surprised that with all the web searches I did about this, I didn't find a reference to the links supplied in the answers I received here. Andrei and Salman again thanks.
Using the -t option with the aptitude command, xombrero installed first try. So far I like the changes I see with xombrero, except one(can not scroll through the tabs with the mouse scroll wheel as I did with xxxterm) -- not your problem! Re-reading about apt, aptitude and synaptic, so hopefully I won't be bothering you again with stuff I should have already been aware of. I believe I got way to complacent using synaptic most of the time. I'll be fixing that.
Best to all,
Jim