gnome 2.3 desktop shows home/me not home/me/Desktop

[Paul Allen Newell]

While prepping my machine to give to repair folk, I was cleaning things 
up and suddenly, on a fresh login, the screen is displaying the contents 
of home as opposed to home's Desktop folder. I know what happened ... I 
accidentally deleted Desktop rather than the contents. Creating a new 
Desktop didn't solve the problem.

Went through gnome 2.3 docs online and looked for dot files that had 
changed dates to reflect a change around when I made my mistake.

Any idea what I need to do to restore original behavior?

Thanks in advance,
Paul