“I occasionally found a dime in one.”
When I was ages 10 - 14 or so, I rode my bike everywhere and I would stop at five or six phone booth around the neighborhood to check for that unclaimed dime. I, too, occasionally found one. It was always exciting to score that dime!
At one of my regular phone booth stops in a gas station parking lot, the phone rang one day as I was picking up the dime. The voice said “Did you just take a dime from the phone?”
I stammered “Uh, yeah.”
The voice said “You better put it back before we get there.” (or it might have been “before we call the cops”)
I was scared to death and put the time back and pedaled furiously away.
Some time later, I figured out you could call pay phones and the guys in the gas station were having a good joke at my expense. They planted the dime and were watching for me to make my rounds, then gave me the call when they spotted me. It still cracks me up.
I saw the punchline before you got there. Did you stop checking that phone?
“It was always exciting to score that dime!”
Yep! That was in the day of penny candy!
Back when there was Ben Franklin Stores. They had a penny candy aisle. Loved it.