Oh rats! It seems that, @bobcousins, you are right! I do have the initial revision of the board where the T3 transistor is horizontally and I need to add the resistor in between its legs for "load on reset" fix.
I measured and it's true that the #OE line of the buffer is grounded...
What is your suggestion? Should I desolder the tiny line buffer, cut the ground plane/trace, and make a solder blob between #OE and Input? Or is it easier to cut the output trace as I indicated in my screenshot and add a 1K resistor between the buffer output and the RX input pin of the chip? (Presumably both solutions will work the same)
Thanks!
PS: Arduino should have noted revision changes between boards...