You're really about memory lane there, trex! I remember back from the late 1970's and early 1980's of somehow making a mental note of where the best pay phones were located, which ones worked well, which ones had the best surroundings with the least noise interference from traffic, things like that. I learned that hospital lobbies, Denny's restaurants, bus terminals, places like that had the best phone booths with doors you could close for privacy and for quietness, and most often had seats so if it's a long conversation or several phone calls you're not on your feet the whole time.  

And writing this now, I also remember carrying 5 or 6 dimes (in the 1970's) with me all the time so I'd be ready in case I needed to make calls. By the mid 1980's, I was in the military and stationed far from my hometown, and it was the first time I began making long-distance calls, so a few dimes in my pockets became a roll of dimes and a couple rolls of quarters in my car all the time. Every payday (when I first joined, we were paid in cash, I'd go to the bank on base and get rolled coins.

Of course, this is about Thomas Brothers mapbooks too, and every few months I would buy the newest edition for the area I lived in, but I would usually keep the older ones, so I had a stack of them for a while. I had stuff marked in them or notes that I had scribbled, and I also kept them for nostalgia's sake. I think I stopped buying them sometime in the mid-1990's. I remember finding that stack of dog-earred and slightly moldy Thomas Brothers guidebooks in my garage right around 2005, I was purging everything I no longer needed, and they were the first to go.