The ice-house, or whatever it was, had never been painted and the grain stood out on the shrunken wood like veins in an aged hand.
At a respectable distance from the woods near the shore where Pee-wee stood was a sizable village, or young town, big enough to have traffic signs and parking zones and a main street and a movie show and such like pretentious things.

Between this town and the shore were a few outlying houses, but mostly sparse woodland.

To the north the woods were thicker.
The lights of this neighboring town formed a cheery background to the dark, silent lake shore.

This town was West Ketchem and the chief sensation in West Ketchem during the last few years had been the destruction by fire of the public school, a calamity for which every boy went in mourning.
Across the lake, Pee-wee could see other and fewer lights.

These belonged to a smaller village in which nothing at all had ever happened, not even the burning of its school.