Read this paragraph from Chapter 1 of To Kill A Mockingbird.
"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy wepther the streets turned to
red slop: grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow it was hotter then: a black
dog suffered on a summers day, bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the
live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their
three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."
What is the narrator establishing in this paragraph?