It turns out that gTCPcon is _not_ a pointer to the TCP stream. 
gTCPcon.TCPCStream& is. For all who need to find the status of their TCP 
connection, and alert the user of problems, use this code:

      theStatus = FN TCPConnectionStatus%(gTCPcon.TCPCStream&)
      LONG IF theStatus <> 8
        gExchangeStep = _closeTCPconnection
      END IF

Thanks for all your help, Greg! After looking into the format of 
TCPStatus for awhile, I decided that it was formatted correctly in the 
TCP Demo package. Which led me to look (for the third time) at how I was 
calling it. The globals file showed the real format of gTCPcon.