Oh, yeah, if local calls weren't free, BBS's would have never taken off the way they did. It was a thrill being part of a network where each BBS would make a nightly call to the furthest still-local BBS, which would then repeat the process... You could reach all the way across the country and back in a few days, for free! It felt like you were getting away with something. Exciting times.

Yes! Using things like Bluewave offline email reader was amazing.