On Friday, former Temple coach John Chaney will go into the Big 5 Hall of Fame with an induction class that includes two of his coaching contemporaries, Rollie Massimino (Villanova) and Speedy Morris (La Salle). And today, the Daily News‘ Mike Kern wrote a feature about Chaney’s induction, the first in a series that will also cover Massimino and Morris. We have to say, however, that Chaney captured the magic of the Palestra in a way no writer in this town really could — by describing, of all things, what it was like when he went to the men’s room. Kern was wise to let Chaney do the talking, and after the jump, we have the quotes.

“There was a pageantry that existed in the Palestra,” Chaney says. “There’s ghosts in that place. But I always looked forward to the guy outside, with the pretzel wagon and the peanuts. And I’d tell him to put lots of mustard on it, and he’d get it all over my hand. So I’m in there, licking it off my fingers. And in those days you could scout the other team if you were playing the second game. I’d go up in the stands, and I’m shelling the peanuts all over. They were just unbelievable. The guy next to me had to move over. He was stepping all over the shells.

“Jimmy [Maloney, longtime Temple assistant] used to tell me the Palestra was the only place you had to use the public bathrooms, because the locker rooms had one little toilet and it was filled up with your kids. So you go upstairs, and you’d be doing your business and some guy would ask you for your autograph. And you’d be standing there with one hand. Or if you sat down in the stall, the door would be off. And someone would walk by and go, ‘How you doing, coach?’ They thought nothing of it. They’d say, ‘I’ll wait for you to finish.’

“It was Philadelphia at its roots. It was basic, and it was raw. It was the common man. It wasn’t the guy who comes in and looks down. You could not find people that were bad people coming to a game. They’d have all the signs up. You know, ‘We’re going to kill you.’ But they weren’t. Everybody knew everybody. It was great.”

Awesome. Just awesome.

The entirety of Kern’s story can be read here.

Link: Chaney relives his own Palestra magic [Daily News]
Photo credit: [Daily News]