THINGS THAT GO BUMP - THE UNDERTAKER - Government - http://maxpages.com/darkevilworld/Things_That_Go

THE UNDERTAKER IS DEAD! CUMMINS UNIT WARDEN DALE REED ORDERED THIS DEMONIC PIECE OF EQUIPMENT REMOVED FROM THE UNIT AND NEVER AGAIN RETURNED! A NEW LAUNDRY CART SYSTEM IS NOW IN PLACE AT THE UNIT AND MANY INJURIES AND DEATHS WILL BE PREVENTED AS A RESULT. I WANT TO THANK ALL OF YOU WHO SENT MESSAGES TO THE GOVERNOR TO SEE THIS ACCOMPLISHED AND WE ALL WANT TO THANK WARDEN REED FOR THIS FIRST ACTION TO MAKE THE ADC A MORE HUMANE INSTITUTION. READ THE NOVEMBER 20 ARKANSAS JOURNAL ENTRY ABOUT THE DEMISE OF THE UNDERTAKER

The Cummins Unit Laundry is located in the southerly part of the compound next to 19 Barracks. Northeast and across the paved road is the rear door of the Infirmary, and further right is a double-wide service door opening onto the main hallway between 12 and 14 Barracks.

For many years, this East Hall door was opened each morning to permit barracks porters to proceed to trash call to dump the daily accumulation of garbage from inside the respective barracks. A tractor-pulled wagon made of corrugated iron mesh was provided for the purpose. However, officials then determined that opening the side door every morning was too much of a hassle due to a professed constant shortage of staff. However, the better truth is that many guards don't like doing manual labor or things that are "beneath their dignity", such as overseeing trash call. They in turn have created a science of taking well-timed breaks or going to the restrooms at the critical times they don't care to supervise. So, the East Hall doors stayed locked for the next several years.

The laundry workers have for years picked up and delivered daily loads of clothing from in front of each barracks, in a slender, elongated rickshaw-like cart. The two-wheeled homemade contraption is constructed from scraps of metal, pipe and wood. It is about 9 feet in overall length, about 6 feet of which is a three-sided box open at the front. The remaining length is two "handlebars" of two inch pipe that projects straight forward about three feet for the runner to guide and fulcrum the load of laundry. The cart is very narrow, less than three feet wide, barely allowing for the worker to stand between the handlebars.

"The Undertaker" as it has come to be called by the prisoners, was built in its specific dimensions to allow it to slip through the tiny rectangle of a standard sized door in the event that the East or West Hall double-wide doors were not accessible. It has been given its gruesome and morbid name because of the scores of prisoners that have been run over by it and seriously or fatally injured across many years, and because it is now painted a deep blood red. Its two wheels are regular truck tires that can leave a impressive design when rolling across someone's body.

Watching the laundry cart being loaded is actually a marvel in motion. It almost defies belief how many huge 100+ pound bags of laundry can be balanced onto the cart at one time. From a collective hundreds of years of experience laundry workers responsible for driving The Undertaker have mastered the laws of weights and balances to the point of almost being able to defy them. Almost. They had no choice but to master it or risk disciplinary action if their supervisors felt that the work was not being done fast enough, or had caused them to work a few extra minutes in their five hour day. So, bag after bag of laundry is wedged onto the cart, held there only by the pressure of their own sheer weight and the force of gravity.

An average load on the cart is many hundred pounds of dirty clothes, and despite the fact that it sometimes takes two persons to pull the cart perpendicular to the ground when the wagon is being prepared to roll, the workers have also learned to master basic principles of leverage and motion and thereby accomplish what to most persons would appear to be an impossible task. However, by one worker briefly hanging onto the handlebars and shifting his weight down (like swinging on a bungi cord), while another worker pulls up while pushing slightly forward, with perfect timing, the cart rights itself and balances upon the fulcrum of its two wheels, like a rickshaw.

Although most of the workers have no idea of who Sir Isaac Newton was nor about any of the laws or theorems that he discovered or postulated, they do know that when at rest the laundry cart tends to stay at rest, and when it is in motion at 8 to 10 miles per hour, it tends to stay in motion unless it suddenly strikes something. They also have no appreciation for the technical points of physics and force that would define the dynamics of the laundry cart when a mass of its several hundred pounds releases its tons of kinetic force into an object it encounters suddenly, or that the kinetic energy translated into the tip of the two inch pipe of the handlebars may upon impact deliver a force of a few thousand pounds per inch (psi). No, what needs doing is that the cart gets loaded with dirty laundry in a hurry, and the washed clothes get delivered back to the barracks in a hurry, or else disciplinary court will expound on laws of another kind and some other worker will land a "good" job. There's just no room for a bunch of technical know-how beyond that.

Across the many years that The Undertaker has been in use, the narrow side door on the south side of the main building by the Control Center is where it comes and goes. A small slash of cement ramp was built just outside that door some years ago, not for the laundry cart but for physically challenged prisoners who are in wheelchairs, so that they could get inside the building to eat or get their medications and not be left out in the weather for hours on end, the way it used to be. Until the ramp was built, the laundry cart would simply be run at the building as fast as possible to slice over the up-step and into the building by its own hurling momentum. Actually, crashing The Undertaker through that narrow door was yet another almost superhuman accomplishment, because the clearance on either side of the door is less than two inches left and right when the wagon passes through - even without a load of 100 pound bags of laundry. A slight misalignment, miscalculation or shift in weight, and...

It is not possible to recount all the incidents of crashes of the laundry cart over the years, but there have been hundreds. On the way OUT of the building with the daily loads only a few dozen prisoners have broken their hands, arms, ribs or smashed their hands or faces when the cart went out of control. So relatively few prisoners have been injured on the way out of the building because it is easier both to monitor and clear the traffic that might get in the way, and because the main hallway is sparsely populated at 5:00 to 7:00 o'clock in the morning when the dirty laundry is generally picked up.

However, when the washed laundry is returned INTO the building, sometimes hundreds of prisoners are in the hallways proceeding to chow, to work, or going about their daily business. Indeed, because of a metal detector set just inside the door there, Security often forces large numbers of prisoners to crowd into the corner by the door through which the laundry cart hurls, awaiting their turns to pass through the detector.

When it is time for the cart to be run into the building with a load of washed clothes, the workers generally stop The Undertaker about 20 to 30 feet short of the ramp outside the building. They "align" it visually with the actual frame of the door in a way that only their practiced eyes can manage. Usually, one of the workers proceeds to ask the officer at the door (whose job it is to monitor the prisoners passing through the metal detector) to halt and clear traffic in the area of the door to allow the cart to be hurled through, and to allow the cart to be turned by a hair's breadth parallel with the hall before hitting the wall of the Clothing Room opposite the door.

The workers then return to the cart, and after usually recruiting a couple of other prisoners coming up the walk to lend a helping hand, Newton's laws of motion and force begin their unfailing dynamics. On a good day, with the right help, the cart and its near half-ton load will be moving 10 to 12 miles per hour when it slices through the doorway...IF it is not knocked off balance by the change in angle at the ramp, or IF it is not out of alignment with the millimeters of clearance through the frame of the door, or IF a laundry bag is not off-center and snags onto the frame of the door to turn the massive spear in the opposite direction as it comes looming down through the door and onto a crowded main hallway.

Inside the building, of course, prisoners who were still several yards down either end of the hallways when The Undertaker "started to roll" have no idea what is going on outside the door nor do they have any way to know. As they walk toward the area of the Control Center they have no inkling that a kinetic mass of a ton or more is hurling toward a place designed only for pedestrians to pass through. The officer, meanwhile often must recall yet another inmate who has just set off the metal detector again because it was so sensitively set that the mere passage of two bodies in close proximity triggers it when the chains on their individual ID cards create a momentarily sensor-detectable mass.

For these reasons, it is a routine matter for The Undertaker to slice and rip through the door and suddenly loom six or seven feet above the unfortunate prisoners stepping into its path, its handlebars projecting like spears into the bodies of prisoners unable to get out of the way. Sometimes a half dozen inmates at once come to learn first hand of the bone-crunching power of The Undertaker.

Should an unfortunate prisoner wander unaware into the path of the hurling cart, even if warning is given a brief second or two in advance, the yell usually comes from a location AWAY from the door and it is only human nature to instinctively turn toward the person screaming "Look out!" to see what is the matter, rather than toward the door through which the laundry cart is slicing. At other times, there are so many persons milling in that small area of the hallway that there is no real way to know that the yell is even intended for a specific person. Typically, the prisoner about to be struck does not even react, or when he does, he invariably does not instinctively turn out of harm's way, but directly into it.

Again, it is simply not possible to recount the scores and scores of prisoners who have been hurt by having bones broken, their faces smashed, or their bodies deeply bruised because of this deplorable situation. The latest incident, occurred on July 15, 1999. It is a prime example of the sheer ignorance, callousness and incompetence of prison officials who have not only allowed it to go on all these years, but who in fact demand that it continue to be done this way. It is unconscionable, inexcusable, and even criminal given the fact that there are at least two double door entries to the building where the cart could always have been safely handled, although an officer would actually have to bother himself to open a gate or two in the process, and the laundry supervisors might have to work a few minutes more because the workers' route would be slightly more circuitous.

The broken bones, the smashed limbs and faces attributable to The Undertaker are just a blur in succession. It would not be a surprise to me to learn that it has been painted blood red not to somehow assist with its detection as it hurls down the halls and walkways, but to cover over and make less detectable the prisoners' blood that has streaked and splattered it an endless number of times.

In my own heart, and with clear conscience, I know and have no trouble saying that more than one prisoner's death can be attributed to this insanity across the past 20 years. I have myself twice been struck by that cart across the years, although, thankfully, I suffered no real injury. Tragically and unforgivably, so many others were not as lucky.

If you, or someone you know have been injured by The Undertaker, or if you know someone who has been killed by this demonic piece of equipment, please send a message to the e-mail address below, or sign my guest book.

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LINDA TANT MILLER

WASHINGTON

USA

tantsy1@msn.com

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Page Updated Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:54am EST