GREENVILLE – As I drove my pickup past the gas station this week on my way to work, the sign read $3.88 per gallon. The truck was still running on $3.66-per-gallon fuel, so I drove slowly and tried to keep my foot off the brake.

I had just watched a segment on one of the morning news shows about how you can save fuel by slowing down and staying off the brake.

The technique does seem to work, though. I don't think I used more than one gallon of gasoline the entire 10 miles. And except for the long line of angry motorists behind me, driving slowly was not a bad experience. It makes you think about patience.

If anything good comes out of the skyrocketing cost of oil and gasoline, it might be that it will force everyone to slow down and become more patient.

As I snaked through town with what looked like a funeral procession behind me, I thought about my grandfather, Wheeler Walters, who led more than a few funeral processions during his 86 years.

Not just because he drove slowly, but also because he owned and operated a funeral home.

If Wheeler Walters were still alive, I wondered, what might he say about $3.88 gasoline? Likely nothing. He'd tell a story about how he managed to keep food on his family's table during the Great Depression and still have a little left over for coffee and sugar.

Wheeler earned patience growing up on his grandfather's farm in Tennessee. He told a story about his grandfather sending him to the mill on a mule with a sack of corn to be ground, and strict instructions to wait for the meal to come back.

It was quicker and easier to swap the corn for some that was already ground, but Wheeler's grandfather was particular about his cornmeal and handpicked the corn for it.

"I figured cornmeal was cornmeal," Wheeler said, "so I swapped it out and went swimming in the creek."

That night at the supper table, his grandfather took one bite of cornbread and gave young Wheeler a verbal thrashing for disobeying his orders. Helping his grandmother with the dishes later, Wheeler told her the cornbread had tasted the same to him as any he'd ever had, and he wondered aloud how his grandfather's taste buds could be so sensitive.

She laughed and revealed that his grandfather had known the cornmeal had come from someone else's corn the minute he took the sack off the mule. Had the cornmeal been freshly ground, she said, the sack would have been warm.

A day after that slower drive to work, I saw that gasoline was up to $3.95 per gallon and I wondered what kind of stories my kids might tell their grandchildren some day. I'm thinking maybe they won't be so much different from the ones Wheeler told. Because the way things are going, we may soon get back to hauling corn on mules.