gazing down , we can observe a roadside parking area , two gasoline pumps , and a long gray roof bearing the fading legend roy 's store ; when he looked to his right and saw , past the gas pumps , the wooden stairs rising to a wide , inviting porch and the store 's entrance , he felt as though he had already mounted those stairs a hundred times before and gone inside to pick up bread , milk , beer , cold cuts , work gloves , a screwdriver , a bag of tenpenny nails , whatever he needed from the practical cornucopia crowded onto the shelves , as after that day he would do , a hundred times and more .