Item: Abilene City Government Flier, circa 1960

(click for larger image)

This piece came to me inside a book that I had purchased, it was probably being used as a bookmark. I often purchase books in lots, and have found some interesting things between the pages!

It is a small piece, about 3 inches by 5 inches.  The front lists some facts about Abilene city government, the location of city offices, and a nice bar graph showing the trends in tax rates for the decade 1950 to 1960.

On the back is a phone directory of city offices. Note that the telephone numbers all start with 'OR'. This is from the old telephone exchange naming system (as a kid my phone number was HOme 5-5654). I found out that the OR corresponds to the ORchard exchange in Abilene.

If you want to find out more about the old alpha telephone exchanges, a great site is The Telephone Exchange Name Project.