[CentOS] on emacs startup no fonts, just little empty boxes

Just upgraded CentOS to (uname) "Linux 2.6.18-164.2.1.el5.plus #1 SMP
Fri Oct 9 12:34:43 EDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux" and since then,
when emacs (version 21.4.1) starts up (using emacs -Q), where there
should be text there are only little empty boxes, each the size of
character.  The error message reads:

Warning: Cannot convert string
"-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string
"-*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct

I've tried running "emacs --font <font-spec>" with different font specs,
but all of them error'd out also.

"fc-list" shows 156 fonts available... you'd think emacs would be able
to grab one of them and be happy with it.

What's emacs doing or trying to do?

Anybody have a 5.4 issue with fonts?

tia for any help.

-- 
War is a failure of the imagination.
        --William Blake