A plea from the Route 31 Back River Road Gatekeeper
By Chuck Wiser, I write the words to share what my eyes see and my heart feels
A “Jake Brake” (short for Jacobs Engine Brake) is a system used on heavy-duty diesel trucks. It temporarily alters the engine’s exhaust valves to turn the engine into a powerful air compressor. This allows the truck to slow down without relying solely on standard friction brakes.
When a truck driver takes their foot off the accelerator, the engine usually idles. When a Jake Brake is engaged, the mechanism opens the exhaust valves right at the top of the piston’s compression stroke. Instead of the compressed air pushing the piston back down (which provides power), the compressed air is released out of the exhaust system. This forces the engine to fight against the resistance of the compression cycle, which rapidly slows the truck down. On steep mountain downgrades, a heavy truck’s regular friction brakes can overheat and lose stopping power. Jake Brakes take the load off, keeping the regular brakes cool and preventing runaway situations.
I was torn between that starting paragraph and one mentioning the number of “souls on board” at the Wiser’s Wrambling Wriver Wroad Wresidence. Listening to the scanner whenever I am within earshot I often hear a similar notification from MTS or other EMS vehicles that there are “X number of souls on board” when an EMT vehicle has departed. It is obvious what that means but my curiosity about the phrase led me to my normal Wrambling Wresearch.
The phrase “souls on board” comes from maritime tradition, Dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, ship captains used “souls” in their logs to provide an exact, unambiguous count of every living human—including crew members and passengers—without needing to differentiate between them. This terminology was later adopted by the aviation industry and is primarily used during emergencies. There are a few key reasons the term persists:
–All-Inclusive Count: It accounts for everyone on the craft—passengers, flight attendants, pilots, and even un-ticketed infants.
—No Confusion with Cargo: It clearly distinguishes living humans from baggage, cargo, or animals.
—Search and Rescue Shorthand: In the event of an accident, it tells search-and-rescue teams the exact number of lives they are responsible for locating or recovering.
Listening to the scanner is a mixed blessing type of thing. I presume that for the most part the reason we have it is the “curiosity” of what the sirens we are hearing as they race by the house are for. The downside is hearing the saddest aspect of that when they advise to: “notify the coroner.” The worst possible outcome is that of hearing a family member’s name mentioned there. On the “up side” of that is the honor and admiration we feel when hearing grandson Ethan Grave’s voice as he responds with the “Scio 2” call name. We share that proudness with, and for, all other emergency responders and “Thank You” to all of them.
One curiosity I do have about scanner calls is about when the age and gender of the patient is mentioned.
The gender is quite obvious (usually), but I wonder how they know, or why they report the age. Are they able to determine the age by asking or how? Normally a specific age is mentioned but I have heard some of the more general terms as “Elderly” before.
I interrupt this Wrambling to share what my eyes are just now seeing in “My Backyard.” As I typed, some movement beyond my focused eyes caught my attention. I looked up in time to see a “flock” of young deer come up over the bank behind our house to check out the Apple tree, fruit growth. The deer were in two batches. The first was a doe and her triplet “spotted fawns.” Next came what was probably last year’s batch as they were larger and two of the 6 or so that were there had their horns on. The clarity of the picture could be better, but in my eyes, and heart, they are as crystal clear as they can be.
At this time of year with all of the fledged birds now busily visiting the feeders, and the larger wild life displaying their “flocks” my heart swells.” Where else would you rather be, than right here, right now?” As the politician once asked. The timing of today’s visits could not have been better.
And now, I can finally get to my scripted outline of topics. None of the above had been previously planned.
A recent Buffalo Bills player’s generosity has been flooding the airwaves lately.
Buffalo Bills wide receiver DJ Moore purchased 27 of his own jersey T-shirts, totaling over $1,200, from Tee Shirt University at the Walden Galleria in Cheektowaga, NY. He instructed the store to give the shirts away, for free, to fans who could simply claim them with a special tag. The generous gesture quickly became a hit on social media, with Tee Shirt University marking the shirts with a “0$ price tag” and the message, “This shirt was paid for by DJ Moore!”. The assistant manager at the shop stated that the surprise gifting deeply touched the local community, and by the next morning, nearly all 27 shirts had been claimed.
Moore joined a large cadre of the many generous Bills of the past.
You’ve no doubt heard the term of a “Courtesy flush” I presume. If, not I’m not going to explain that here. However, I will explain the term “Courtesy Flash” as occurred most recently on one of my Olean shopping return trips traveling the windy (long “I” sound) Rte. 31 between Friendship and Scio. As I approached a blind curve on that road a car passing in the opposite direction “flashed” its lights at me. This is normally a “high sign” that there is law enforcement somewhere ahead of me warning me to slow down if I needed to. I didn’t need to as I was traveling the speed limit or just a couple of MPH over. On the other side if that road bend was a tow truck in the road, on my side, pulling an off-road vehicle up to him. Had I not received that warning I most likely would have had a serious problem. Thank you courtesy flash driver.
My first Wrambling topic, that regarding Jake Brakes, was prompted by the daily, often hourly, “extreme sound” of that phenomenon at our residence. Our house is less than 100 yards from the stop sign, which in, and of itself, must be invisible to many drivers traveling our road and at the intersection with Cty. Rte. 31. We are blessed with a significant number of heavy-duty trucks, most likely as we are only one road away from Potter’s Gravel yard, or the one across the road from our house. This is a very much travelled road for those trucks. The trucks apply their Jake Brakes as they approach the end of our road, which just happens to happen right in front of our house.
Having been in residence here since the early 70’s you would think that we would be used to that by now. We are but for some reason the current batch of trucks seem to have a much louder exhaust system that lets out a very loud bellow with accelerating (going the other way) or decelerating. I’m just glad that they don’t start travelling any earlier in the morning than they do.
Last week, I believe, I mentioned a particularly low volume of flies being around this year. If so, I had thought it, but it is time to “re-thought” it. The flies are now here in abundance and are once again a nuisance. We seem to have an abundance of smaller than the normal sized flies. Although smaller, they are no less irritating. My fly swatter is always within reach, and my aim is good.
We are still suffering the aftereffects of our checking and banking accounts fraudulent hacking despite having closed all of those accounts and opened new ones. The problem continues, albeit somewhat lessened by having replaced those. A few “auto-payment” accounts are still active but now only those that come due annually, and I don’t recall them until they do. The frequency has greatly declined but every few weeks or so we get a message that our auto-pay account is locked. At that time, I decide whether it is an account, like ESPN that I want to keep, or can I just discontinue it. Discontinuation is winning out in most cases. More on ESPN after I finish the “hacking” deal. I recently received a service discontinuation notice from National Fuel and had to go through a lengthy process, including paying substantial penalties and fees to prevent a discontinuation of my service.
I haven’t yet decided on ESPN, and whether to sign up for, or continue its coverage. . The only TV that I watch, and therefore channels that carry them, are the St. Bonaventure “Bonnies” and the Buffalo Bills. The Bills play on our normal standard channels (usually) but the Bonnies don’t. I used to be able to sign up for ESPN, watch a Bonnies game, and then discontinue ESPN.
I did that on a game-by-game basis. I used to be able to watch a game at a cost of 81¢ per game, cancel my account, and then reactivate it for the next game. They caught on to that and changed to a different “term of use” arrangement. Football and Bonnies basketball action will resume in late August so I’ll have to make a decision soon as to how to handle that. I am seriously considering getting a season ticket for the Bonnies. They do offer a special “Four Game” or some other number, package for Bonnies games whereby you can get tickets for your choice of games. I may do that again this year and worry about TV coverage later.
If you have any comments, questions or concerns, please feel free email me at IM.Wiserdad@gmail.com. Thank you for reading.
