This fails on only one user ID, ( mine ) on Slackware 14.2, 64 bit. I did try another user ID.

This version is working fine on my other systems. I suspect there is some setting in XFCE that should fix this. This is 14.2, 64 bit with all the latest patches installed.

When I go to change the download location, there is a pop up, I'm guessing it is from Thunar. I see normal icons, and beside them, instead of seeing the folder name, I see a box character for each letter in the folder name.

I have poked around in XFCE settings without any change in this display. I looked at Chromium settings, fonts, and have found no way of correcting this. My work around is to use Firefox when downloading files. In FF I can see the folder names normally.

Your thoughts on how to fix are appreciated.

Fixed. I went into XFCE settings, appearance, Fonts and selected a different font. In this case I chose Liberation Sans Narrow instead of Terminus. It is now working as expected.