Ahhhhhh...that's why!! Danny you rule!

I was trying to figure this out for him in 4.5 and got the same results. I KNEW i had gotten the translate axis marking menus before but now realize it must've been when I was using 4.0.

I even looked in the help docs and it gave the same directions for both menus....looked at the hotkey editor to see what marking menu each hotkey was associated with.....thought I was going nuts for awhile.