Growing Up In Brooklyn

Before we moved to the Brigham Park Cooperative Apartments on Brigham Street we lived on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn, I don't remember the number. What I do remember is that there was an elevated subway line that ran on McDonald Ave, and beneath the "El" (short for elevated) ran a trolley car line. I can remember coming home from Public School and playing out in front of our apartment house, and watching the trolley cars go by. As boys will be boys we would place things on the tracks like rocks and bottles to watch the trolly car wheels crush the objects. Of course our parents strictly forbid this practice but we did it anyway. One day someone came up with the bright idea of placing a coin on the tracks to see what the trolley car would do to the coin. Someone, eventually came up with a penny which we placed on the tracks. It was flattened like a pancake by the trolley car. It seems that we could have predicted this result but as kids it was more fun and more " naughty" to actually use real money -- a penny. This was 1950 when a penny was actually worth more than a glass bottle. I can also remember we wanted to try a nickel, but no one could figure out how we were going to get our hands on that kind of fortune.