In Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, what details about the town, its history, and its inhabitants make the place feel real?

Harper Lee describes Maycomb and its intricacies in To Kill a Mockingbird.  She tells the story of Maycomb and the people who live there through the young narrator, Scout.  These details show Maycomb as a town like many other real places in the Southeastern United States in the 1930s.  Scout describes the town in the way she observes it:

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first...

Harper Lee describes Maycomb and its intricacies in To Kill a Mockingbird.  She tells the story of Maycomb and the people who live there through the young narrator, Scout.  These details show Maycomb as a town like many other real places in the Southeastern United States in the 1930s.  Scout describes the town in the way she observes it:

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.  In rainy weather 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 summer's 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. (Chapter 1)

The town of Maycomb predated the Civil War.  It was the county seat of the county it shared a name with.  Maycomb had a grassy square, a courthouse, shops, and restaurants.  It was home to many people who had lived there or nearby for generations.  There was also a newspaper, The Maycomb Tribune.

These descriptions of Maycomb could also be said of many small towns in Alabama.  There were many historic small towns with longtime citizens, muddy streets, and squares with stately old buildings in the 1930s.  Alabama is full of towns that were established before the Civil War.  In the summertime, a seemingly endless heat spreads over Alabama.  In the 1930s, there was no air conditioning, so people were not able to escape the heat as easily as they do in modern times.  The descriptions of men with wilting collars and women taking baths and naps in the heat show images of people dealing with heat.