try starting it at the solenoid with a screw driver or a wrench or whatev. thats a solid way to check it. U dont need to have a shop check ur starter man lol just take ur jumper cables and put one cable on battery positive and touch it to the positive lug on the starter. If it turns its good (please god make sure the dam thing is out of gear first lol) thats a solid way to check ur starter. Try all that n let us know

 

Ten bucks says if you batteries good it's your starter. Swap the solinoid anyways if you put in a new starter. A good thing to do too is change to 2ga cable for the battery to the solinoid and from the solinoid to the starter.
One other suggestion would be you have corroded on the inside cables. I have seen it before where you couldn't even tell it was corroded. I gave the cable a yank and it came right out of the lug corroded as hell. Replacing the cables would circumvent that issue.
You should also take three 4 ga grounds from the battery. One to the radiator support, one to the frame and one to the engine block. The one ground stock is not adequate.

 

Well, it is starting now. I put a new starter solinoid & nothing happened. Turns out one of my buddies came over and put 2ga wires on both posts and ran another ground to the chassis. The negative wire going to the engine block was the big problem.

Now it starts easier than ever. But, it only runs at idle, dies when I give it gas. I let it run up to operating temp and it started to puff some black smoke periodically. I changed one of the fuel filters (inline one), the one at the carb. was changed 5 weeks ago. I put more gas in her, by means of a couple trips to the gas station with can-in-hand. I also added some HEET (dry gas) incase there was water in the tank since it almost ran out. Any ideas about the gas/idle situation?

 

black smoke means its running rich might want to clean and check the carb

 

I will wait till the auto parts store opens in the morning and get some carb cleaner. I will see if that helps...Thanks