Serial Question...

Archiver

I have an extremely simple program as follows...

LEDs Var OutA
TxD Con 15
RxD Con 14
Baud96 CON 84
cmd Var Byte
param VAR Word
CLEDs CON $FF
SLEDs CON $FE

Initialize:
DirA = %1111
Main:
cmd = 0
SERIN RxD, Baud96, [noparse][[/noparse]WAIT ("?"), HEX cmd]
LOOKDOWN cmd, [noparse][[/noparse]CLEDs, SLEDs], cmd
BRANCH cmd, [noparse][[/noparse]LEDStat, SetLEDs]
SEROUT TxD, Baud96, [noparse][[/noparse]"The command was: ", HEX2 cmd, CR]
GOTO Main
End

LEDStat:
SEROUT TxD, Baud96, [noparse][[/noparse]"LED Status: ", BIN4 LEDs, CR]
GOTO Main

SetLEDs:
SERIN RxD, Baud96, [noparse][[/noparse]BIN param]
LEDs = param.LowNib
GOTO LEDStat

Now, when I run that program in the debug terminal in The Basic Stamp editor
from Parallax, all is well. Works like a charm. Now, when I try to run it
from python with a simple program as follows

ser = serial.Serial(1, timeout=1)
ser.write("?FF\r")
line = ser.readline()
print line
ser.close()

Then it only works every other time. I'm sure there is some silly bit
somewhere that I've improperly set, but I can't figure it out. I've tried
substituting ?FF\r\r, ?FF, \r?FF\r, etc, but it still won't work every time.
What do I need to reset to make it happen for me?

Thanks,
Kelley