I’m too much of a *nix rookie to even attempt such a thing.

Lpr was working just fine and suddenly it stopped working. I thought that removing CUPS to debug might help. Thx!!
You have tripped across one of the major mis-features of CUPS. It installs replacements for the common lpr/lpd commands in alternative directories:
Code:
/usr/local/sbin/lpc
/usr/local/bin/lpr
/usr/local/bin/lpq
whereas the originals are in:
Code:
/usr/sbin/lpc
/usr/bin/lpr
/usr/bin/lpq
To confirm that the CUPS versions of these programs are in the "local" directories:
Code:
[f121.189] $ strings /usr/local/bin/lpr | grep -q cups && echo CPS version
CPS version
I don't know of a simple solution to this dilemma, as the outcome depends on your PATH, and changing your PATH for CUPS may break other things.
A temporary solution is to move the executables in /usr/local/bin out of the way (e.g. to
/usr/local/bin/lpr.cups) but that will break the next time you patch or upgrade CUPS. this would get you out of trouble while you figure out how to proceed.
I don't use
lpr(1) any more, and I use the (alternative lp/lpadmin) System V command set (which are also installed with CUPS and are unambiguous) for printing with CUPS, so I am no longer bothered by this dilemma.