We brought a dog back from the Caribbean with us a few years ago. He had never experienced a temperature below 70 or above 85.
When we landed in Pittsburgh it was 18. He just stood still and shivered. He couldn’t believe it!
It took him about two weeks and a dog coat before he was running and playing in the snow.
I worked for my dad in the summers during high school. He was a manager/assistant VP, so suit and tie every day. He handled it by cranking up the air conditioner in the car. Probably in the office, too. I had to have a sweater or I’d freeze. I didn’t dress warmer because one of my tasks was taking papers to other offices, in downtown Baltimore in the humidity. No way I could have walked from building to building in other than a sleeveless dress. (It was 1970/71, so dress and hose and heels was the dress code. How did I survive???)
FWIW, we didn’t have a/c at home, but he didn’t wear his work clothes at home either.
My wife is from Brazil, and she mentions from time to time how her father was a shipyard worker in Rio de Janeiro during World War II. She said that he would go to work in a suit, change to coveralls for the day, then wash up and change back into his suit for the journey back home, most likely on the ferry, bus, and shoe-leather-express. I doubt that there was much more than a whisper of air conditioning to be had in Rio in 1944.
Boy, what a different world!
They did things like this in public (example for those with Twitter access).
According to a couple of tour guides I met, upper class women in antebellum Charleston, S.C., dealt with the heat by sitting on their porches in their underwear.
Charleston has a characteristic row house, common near the harbor, that is built as a long rectangle, the short side facing the water. This allowed the sea breeze to flow down piazzas built on the upper floors of the long axis of the house. During the hot summer months, women would lounge outside in their petticoats. The convention was that if the door in the wall that enclosed the house and attached gardens was open, the house was considered open for social calls. But if the door were closed, it was completely private, and any passerby who looked up at the ladies languishing en deshabille were violating the country’s first anti-Peeping Tom ordinance.
Don’t know how true this is, or how embellished for the sake of a good story, but I’ve heard it on multiple Charleston tours.
Not just any random football stadium—it was the stadium at Rice University. They have the lectern that JFK spoke at on display at the university library along with an exhibit.
He never had hot days in the Caribbean???
Caribbean is a big place with lots of various geography.
Saint Martin is a fantastic island. There’s always a gentle sea breeze. During the day it reaches the mid eighties, and in summer higher, but he was 11 1/2 weeks old when we decided to adopt him in January.
His coldest temperature was at night when it would drop as low as 75, but 85 was the highest temperature he ever experienced.
Each island in “the Caribbean” is different, with its own unique culture and traditions. I know people from Sint Maarten who will tell you Jamaicans are shit, and others who tolerate Jamaicans, for instance. I know a guy from Dominica who has lived on Saint Martin for 20 years, but still feels he is an outsider. And don’t get me started on Barbadians (@Hari_Seldon).
Yeah, that’s my alma mater. It’s not currently at Fondren Library but at Space Center Houston (basically Johnson Space Center) and has recently been restored.
Though, the claim that it is “the” lectern may not be totally factual. At the time, there were 3 such lecterns in use at Rice for events. At some point, well after the speech, somebody thought it might be a good idea to preserve it for history. Of the 3, they picked the one in best shape, reasoning that it was likely to have been the one they would have used for a speech by the President. And there’s a very good (better than 1/3 anyway) likelihood they are correct about that. They also tend to omit that part of the story. Things worked differently back then in more ways than one.
Not sure why you referenced me. Yes, I’ve been to Barbados many times (about 18 I think) and I love the island and the people. They do not wear suits much although they also do not wear shorts. The temperature in the winter hits 29 or 30 (84-86) every day with lows around 25 and in the summer it goes up to 31, maybe 32. Except for hurricanes, there is little to no day to day variation and you don’t see weather reports regularly.
Me too! 
I see your information is more current than mine. I saw the display the last time I went into Fondren during a visit for a class reunion back in 2016.
I have an uncle who was a student at Rice at the time of the speech. I should ask him if he was there.
OP checking in. Sorry I haven’t been more conversant in this thread, but I’ve enjoyed the discussion.
Some thoughts:
There absolutely does seem to be a time when men were in suits when outside; while it wasn’t universal, as there were others who had uniforms as part of their job (such as police) or functional work clothes (like farmers), it was certainly the norm for adult men.
Here’s a picture of Babe Ruth with some African American fans - I’m stereotyping (and I’m open to correction) but I doubt they were wealthy.
And here is some video of New York in the 1930s. Besides one notable exception (who stares at the camera), the men are in suits.
…
Heatstroke was absolutely a problem for soldiers in the civil war, and part of the issue was the heavy uniform.
“Suffocating at Each Step”—Sunstroke in the Civil War - National Museum of Civil War Medicine.
It’s also interesting to consider how heat was handled by Presidents. Central air conditioning wasn’t installed in the White House until the major renovation done during the Truman administration. Before that, there were a lot of improvisations that were attempted.
Taft also had a sleeping porch
And Wilson used an outdoor office (a tent) that was originally constructed by Teddy Roosevelt.
