Old time hot days in Boston

From the free download chapter

We are much inclined to think that air conditioning is a necessity, but I have to wonder these days whether this and much of the other technology said to be so wonderful is really important at all. I think of the days old people in Boston used to call scorchers, though my mother preferred the ancient term dog days. On those canicules my grandmother would take me on the streetcar from her walk-up South Huntington Avenue apartment in Jamaica Plain downtown to the Boston Common. I still enjoy looking at the details in this photo, the necktie, the newspaper. Was this man a bum? An unemployed veteran? If so, he made an effort to dress properly. Or was he just a lower paid adjuster from one of the insurance companies that dominated the skyline, lacking in those days even the first John Hancock building behind the Boston Common?