sorry to be a bother, but I bought the distributor suggested. It says positive to the coil, and negative to the coil. thats it. Should I ground the coil?
The coil grounds through the negative connection with the distributor. The distributor is timing the coil ground to the firing needs of the engine.
Bring the B+ voltage to the coil, this if you come off the ignition switch needs to be the ignition wire that is hot during start and a 12 volt B+ from the run terminal if it is wired that way which is more common to older points ignitions where the RUN terminal either used a resistive wire or a resistor to deliver 6 to 9 volts to the coil. While the start terminal supplied whatever B+ was with the starter running usually about 8 to 10 volts. With later electronic systems the start switch connects the start and run terminal together so there is always B+ voltage fed to the coil. So you need to know how your wiring is accomplished to be sure you bring B+ voltage to the coil for both start and run with electronic ignitions.
In the end you need to put the 12 volt B+ voltage from the key switch onto the positive terminal of the coil. On this same terminal will connect the usually red wire that is the B+ supply to the distributor, this runs the electronics within the distributor. The negative wire (usually black) is the switched by the distributor connection to the coil, it connects to the coil's negative terminal.
The distributor is switching the primary coil winding to ground or not in time to the engine's spark requirements. When ground happens and current flows through the primary winding a magnetic field builds in the core. There is a sensor in the distributor that is reading timed pulses, these control a transistor that does the coil switching. When the primary winding is shut off by the transistor switch, the magnetic field of the core collapses, when that happens the many more and finer windings of the secondary coil discharge a high voltage into the central terminal of the distributor cap to be sent to the selected cylinder's spark plug. For a points ignition the cam in the distributor is timing the closing and opening of the point switch to accomplish the building of the magnetic field of the primary coil and subsequent collapse of that field to generate the high voltage of the secondary coil.
There are deeper complications of what's going on but that's the working summary. Your wiring is simply to allow this end. If you grounded the coil there would be no interruption of current in the primary winding thus except when turning the key switch OFF there would be no high voltage generated.
Bogie