One of the peculiarities of telephone rates in those days was that it was very common for intra-state calls outside your local calling area (depending on your phone plan there was often a "free" local calling area and an extended region of some sort as I recall) to be more expensive than interstate calls.

ADDED: BTW, in the early eighties, long distance rates were starting to come down but they were still in the tens of cents per minute so something over a dollar/minute in today's currency.