The OA is an honor society of active scouts that have reached at least the rank of First Class and exhibit the traits of a good scout, living by the Scout Oath and Law. The election was held within the troop and the ballots were cast by you fellow scouts. You didn’t know if you were electing into the order or not. It was a secret election and you didn’t find out until you were "tapped" for your ordeal.
The tap out was an elaborate ceremony were members of the ceremonial team dressed as Indians of the Lenne Linape tribe. It was a very solemn event with lots of symbolism. Any talking is met with a stern warning for "Silence!" As the team winds its way through the seats, your Scoutmaster or another OA member would hold their OA sash over your head behind you. The team would suddenly stop in front of you and brother Kitchkinet would gruffly pull you up.
With a stern look in his eyes, he would extend his arms, resting his hands on your shoulder. Then he would raise his right arm and "tap" you three times. Once followed by two more taps. Three taps were symbolic of the three points of the scout oath. The pause after the first tap followed by the next two stood for "1" and "2." This represented "12" for the twelve points of the scout law.
By the time you’re yanked up onto your feet, your knees are already week and slightly trembling, at least they are if you take the ceremony seriously. Then Kitchkinet’s hand comes crashing down on your shoulder. Then a red arrow, the symbol of the OA, is drawn across your forehead to distinguish you as an ordeal candidate. You then fall in line behind the ceremony team and other candidates that have been selected already. Unbeknownst to the candidate, your Scoutmaster has already secreted our sleeping bag to the campfire. A runner from your troop now brings it to you and the ceremony team leads all of the candidates off away from the fire. While the rest of the scouts and leaders are enjoying the campfire program, the candidates have begun their ordeal.
The ordeal lasts all night and most of the next day. The team leads you of into the woods single file. At the back of the line, candidates are stopped and dropped off along the trail. This is were they will sleep the night under the stars. They chose the candidates from the end of the line so those in front don’t see or even know that the others have been "lost." In reality, the candidates are not that far apart. But in the dark of the night in a strange environment, you have no conception of were you are. The ceremony team also does it’s best to wind back and forth a while to purposefully turn your sense of direction around. The next morning you wake up an find out that you were a stone’s throw apart from the candidates in front and in back of you.
The next day, the candidates work in cheerful service. It’s supposed to be in "arduous labor" but its not a forced labor camp. The OA is a service organization so this is symbolic of the commitment. The silence from the previous night is still observed and you are feed "scant" food. We had a small box of cereal an a carton of milk for breakfast and a slice of bread and slice of baloney for lunch with Bug Juice (Bug Juice is the scout name for Kool-Aid.)
During the day we worked on several camp service projects. I can’t remember what they were specifically but they were not to tough nor were they too easy. We kind of introduced ourselves to each other and communicated during the day with a series of nods and hand gestures, maintaining silence all the time.
Late in the afternoon, the ordeal was finally over. But we had to remain silent until we were officially accepted into the order that evening at the banquet. That’s when I found out the names of some of my flow candidates, now ordeal members. One was Jim Gregory who turns out went to my high school, Maine South in Park Ridge. Most of the others lived in Chicago so they went to Chicago public schools. Jim and I lived in Park Ridge just over the border. So we went to a different school even though we were in Chicago Boy Scout troops. Jim, it would turn out, ended up being my senior class president at South.