ok, so this is where I am now. I just ran down stairs. Turned on the ignition, pulled out the headlight switch. The lights come UP but not on. I pull the dimmer and the brights come on. I pull it again, they go off... however, while I'm holding the dimmer switch back, the lowbeams are on. When I let go of it, they're back off again. And they still don't go down on their own.

While I was turning the headlights back to closed, I noticed that on the drivers side, there's a clump of brown wires to the chassis. They are loose and looks like some surface rust under there on the body. Tomorrow I'll wire brush that area, clean that connector and snug it up to see what that does, if anything.

It is likely that the hi-low relay is kaput. Another possible cause could be a loose wire between the relay and the low beam fuses on the fuse panel. You have power to the relay because you have hi beams. The problem is before the fuses because both low beams are out. My son's '73 bug had the same problem. We traced it to the connector on the wire from the relay at the fuse panel. It was actually loose on the fuse panel. Very gentle squeezing tightened it up. Squeeze too hard and it will break.

Good luck

Thanks... I'll take a look at that tomorrow while I'm replacing all the fuses and cleaning the fuse block up.