An Egg, a piece of bread and a paper bag.....

[Daveboone]

Water can be boiled in a paper container placed directly on the heat source such as coals. The paper will only burn down to the water line. I've done it using a piece of notebook paper folded into a box with the corner fasted with paper clips when teaching survival classes in the Army.

I think the real trick is retrieving the water to use.....

 

[Dale Allen Raby]

I've participated in the OOTA ceremony, done at Bear Paw Camp in Mountain, WI, but never got selected. Probably just as well. I would not have been a good leader back then.

 

[oldwood]

Think I'll go make some biscuits , gravy already made.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

(iirc)

So you crack open the egg onto one side of the bread, and using your finger, you scramble it on top of the side of the bread, and spread it around as much of that one side that you can. The egg soaks into the bread some, and then you cook the egg by putting the bag onto some coals with a lot of ashes on them, and then lay the bread egg side down onto the bag..., This cooks the egg enough, and you get a piece of bread with a side of cooked scrambled egg. Just be sure to peel the brown paper of the bag off of the egg before you eat the egg/bread.

Part of the trick is to get the egg cooked enough so it will come away from the paper....,

IF you're really good and have enough time you can toast both sides of the bread first.

LD

There was one scout, who did it as above with a little variation. BUT he was very outdoor oriented by his dad long before becoming a scout.

He had a fire going fast with squaw-wood and one match..., and half of the paper bag. He took his knife and got a couple of long twigs, and shaved off the outer bark, then poked them through the bread to hold it and support it, and rubbed his egg into the bread and used the sticks to hold the bread over the fire and cook his meal. He put the second match and the bag in his pocket. He put the extra match in a safe place with the bag in case we had to start another fire, he said.

LD

 

[springfield art]

I went through my Order of the Arrow "Ordeal" at long-gone Camp Hohobas across the Puget Sound from Tacoma, Washington, about 1967 or so -- Mount Rainier Council. We were allowed some plastic sheeting and our sleeping bags, and as we walked along a trail in the dark and the drizzle, a hand would touch your shoulder and point you right or left off the trail. You stumbled a few paces, spread your groundcloth and sleeping bag the best you could and crawled in. I remember being cold, wet, shivering and getting very little sleep -- in those days there was a lot of cotton flannel in most sleeping bags, worthless when wet.
Finally it began to get light and I could hear others dragging themselves out of their bags, putting on boots and seeing for the first time where they had slept. I had spent my wretched night among salal and last summer's bracken fern scattered under second-growth Doug fir. Silently, like zombies, we trudged down the trail and emerged at the camp headquarters, getting in line for the breakfast ordeal. And it was a cunningly conceived ordeal indeed. One guy handed you a paper cup full nearly to the top with scalding hot chocolate. The next guy placed a piece of toast on top of the cup. The third guy set the diabolical hard-boiled egg on top of the toast and then you had to walk a couple of hundred yards to the picnic tables where you could sit down and inhale your simple breakfast as only a famished young teenager can do.
Here is the Machiavellian twist: You have your big bundle of wet sleeping bag under your left arm and you are carrying your hot chocolate/toast/egg in your free hand and by the time you reach the tables to sit down, the hot chocolate has splashed and turned the toast soggy. It is a matter of time before the egg drops into the cup and the hot liquid splashes over your hand. I remember saying "Ouch" and was immediately censured for breaking the code of silence. I ate what I could salvage while waiting to learn what extra task I was to perform as penance for speaking.
As soon as I got home that afternoon, I peeled off my damp, smelly clothes and took one of the longest hot showers of my life. I'll never forget that OA Ordeal or the ingenious campcraft/wisdom that produced the chocolate toast and egg torture device. To this day, I live in horror of soggy toast.
That's my story, anyway.

Nice memory! I regret never having been a Scout! Your experience sounds a lot like my friend's stories of being in an active Infantry Army unit in Vietnam, except without the being-shot-at- part! I know the Order of the Arrow patches are heavily sought after, did you save yours? I wonder if today's parents let their kids go thru such an ordeal as back in 1967?

 

[sheriff john]

Scouting is needed just as much today as it was 50 years ago. Mebbe more.

 

[SamTex1949]

There was an old Order of the Arrow ritual that involved an egg, a piece of bread and a paper bag. While I remember that, I can't recall how to best utilize them. Was there a real sequence or was this just an exercise in frustration? If it's a real thing I want to try it.

Dont recall anything like that, got tapped out 1964 , St louis BSA council

 

[BillinOregon]

Sam, bless your heart, I had forgotten that phrase, "tapped out." I seem to recall now that one of the leaders on the trail would tap you on your right or left shoulder, and the number of taps indicated how many steps from the trail you were expected to take before bedding down on the spot. Does this conform with your memory of the ritual?
Another friend and former Scout mentioned having a notch cut into his "demerit stick" for speaking during the 24-hour period of complete silence. You could earn up to five demerits before being DQed.I had forgotten this, too, but in my defense, it was 56 years ago ...

 

[OLUT]

Our initiation was similar except it was done right after Hurricane Hazel did major damage to the council's camp in 1954. We all worked our butts off clearing heavy debris . Quite a challenge when total silence was required! (I hadn't thought about this in MANY years until reading this topic)

 

[Versanaut]

My OA experience is similar to @BillinOregon 's except our breakfast was a 1/2 dixie cup of milk, the hard boiled egg, and bread were in a paper lunch bag. We weren't told there was a small cup of milk in the bag..... Between those experiences, and some crazy similar military experiences, I've learned I can tolerate a great deal of 'this sucks' so long as there is a hot shower at the end.

 

[BackDraft]

Until we learned differently, we thought our OOTA ritual was just another sadistic trick our scout leader could pull on us. We endured several of his “Bushcraft Survivl” weekends. While we hated him the, we all agree that after being dropped into the wilderness, we stand a better than average chance of survival. It’s also resilience that we took into adulthood.

 

[oreclan]

Sam, bless your heart, I had forgotten that phrase, "tapped out." I seem to recall now that one of the leaders on the trail would tap you on your right or left shoulder, and the number of taps indicated how many steps from the trail you were expected to take before bedding down on the spot. Does this conform with your memory of the ritual?
Another friend and former Scout mentioned having a notch cut into his "demerit stick" for speaking during the 24-hour period of complete silence. You could earn up to five demerits before being DQed.I had forgotten this, too, but in my defense, it was 56 years ago ...

I still have my OA stick after 60 years. No notch and afterwards I refined the arrow shape and painted it red and white. As to the ordeal I remember very little.

 

[fiddler]

I did Ordeal at Eagle Island PA, lodge #1 (Treasure Island next-door had been temporarily closed) back in... 1972?

Don't recall much except a lot of work. I eventually did Brotherhood too.