So, after an email conversation, I talked myself into simplifying RPoD gopherhole. I stopped using mySQL via a site engine written in C. In its place -- every section of the main gophermap has been split into a sepperate numbered gophermap and placed in a directory named SECTION. The main gophermap just runs a cat * on this directory. Simple, fast, easy to maintain.
The RPoP mySQL server still has a life due to the many other applications running on my network that utilize the DBMS.