Thanks for everyone's help. I got my system restored without having to reinstall from scratch.
I had to use the live usb method to get things working again. In order to get the ncurses-6.0, file I had to cd into /tmp and download using: wget ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/slackware/s ... 6_64-2.txz.
Once I had the new file, I ran the sudo installpkg --root/mnt/floppy ncurses-6.0-x86_64-2.txz.
Installed the new updates and things are working nicely. Thanks again!!!