Hmmm....I wrote a response, and it's not here...oh well.....I'll try again.

First of all, thank-you for your replies. I did the assembly work, and don't think I made a gasket installation mistake, but of course it's possible.

I had discounted water as the problem because of oil on the plug and the fact the smoke doesn't dissipate quickly like steam would, plus it smells like exhaust, not the sweet aroma of antifreeze. But you guys have made me think more about water as the culprit. There is no oil gallerys near #1 plug, but there is water galleries around it.

Think I'll re-pressurize the cylinder and see if there's any bubbles in the puke-tank. Once I get the intake off, I can pressurize again and look for leaks around what I can see of the head gasket. I already did this with valve cover off, looking for air around what i could see of the intake manifold gasket, but could not detect anything.

Yes, the manifold is aluminum.....an Offenhauser 360, which from what I hear isn't that great a manifold, however with a light car, it seems to work fine. (Bad port matches though). It wasn't suffering from any corrosion when I installed it, although things happen.

Although it's only a tiny change in compression, the fact that #1 does measure less than the others bothers me. Could point to a head gasket leak.

Hopefully I can start the tear-down tomorrow. The part I don't like is draining off some coolant. Car is low and a pain to get up in the air to put a bucket under it....er....a couple of buckets....these engines hold a LOT, evn when you just need a bit out (to get the level lower than the heads). The rest of the work is easy enough.

Thanks again. Please feel free to post any more thoughts. I will certainly post my results once I find out what's going on.....to help someone else who may have the same problem, and to satisfy the curious.....chuckle.