[CentOS] CentOS release 5.3 (Final) yum update error TypeError: unsubscriptable object

Just FYI. This machine has been offline and not updated for several months.
I booted it and ran yum update. It generated an error. I googled the error,
no hits. I did "yum clean all". Tried yum update again, it finished
dependency resolution and reported some missing dependencies. I can deal
with that.
love and kisses,
Dave

Here is the tail end of the error output:

---> Package geos-devel.x86_64 0:3.1.0-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: libgeos-3.1.0.so()(64bit) for package: gdal
4f6cc3a71b7f8a837fe18f749eb1740523af76b0-filelists.sqlite.bz2
| 5.6 MB     02:09
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ?
    yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 229, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 145, in main
    (result, resultmsgs) = base.buildTransaction()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 647, in
buildTransaction
    (rescode, restring) = self.resolveDeps()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/depsolve.py", line 704, in
resolveDeps
    for po, dep in self._checkFileRequires():
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/depsolve.py", line 939, in
_checkFileRequires
    if not self.tsInfo.getOldProvides(filename) and not
self.tsInfo.getNewProvides(filename):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/transactioninfo.py", line 414,
in getNewProvides
    for pkg, hits in self.pkgSack.getProvides(name, flag,
version).iteritems():
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/packageSack.py", line 300, in
getProvides
    return self._computeAggregateDictResult("getProvides", name, flags,
version)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/packageSack.py", line 470, in
_computeAggregateDictResult
    sackResult = apply(method, args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 861, in
getProvides
    return self._search("provides", name, flags, version)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 43, in
newFunc
    return func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 837, in
_search
    for pkg in self.searchFiles(name, strict=True):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 43, in
newFunc
    return func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 586, in
searchFiles
    self._sql_pkgKey2po(rep, cur, pkgs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 470, in
_sql_pkgKey2po
    pkg = self._packageByKey(repo, ob['pkgKey'])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 413, in
_packageByKey
    po = self.pc(repo, cur.fetchone())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 68, in
__init__
    self._read_db_obj(db_obj)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/sqlitesack.py", line 94, in
_read_db_obj
    setattr(self, item, _share_data(db_obj[item]))
TypeError: unsubscriptable object