an ocarina

On Friday December 18, 1970, I had a Psych 1 final exam at 7 a.m. for which I'd stayed up cramming pretty late. After the exam a couple friends from back home picked me up and we headed out.
    We stopped at a courthouse so I could register for the draft. My friends were doing spontaneous and lame guerilla theater behind me while I was registering. The lady waiting on me seemed amused by it, but the other lady in the office, an extremely large woman, was fuming. She reminds me now, in retrospect, of the "unemployment bureau" lady described by Richard Pryor in "wino get a job" on one of the Wattstax albums--"tiara and shit," though the lady in the draft office was not thus equipped (the tiara I mean).
    That done, we got lunch (discovering that at least one restaurant had someone scurrying around nicely giving coffee refills--and adding them to the bill) and continued on. Our next stop, after a couple freeway hours, was at our driver's sister's house. She worked for Busch and didn't have a car or need one except that day to pick up her bonus at work, which consisted of a couple cases of beer. She thanked us with some beers, and then we headed off again. Before long, I was saying repeatedly "I only got three hours sleep last night and that was a long time ago." My friends made fun of me for that, but I kept saying it and becoming less coherent.
    The next stop was a Christmas party at the home of our driver's grandparents to which we had not been invited. We got to the neighborhood too early to be fashionably late and were concerned about visible beer effects on our underage demeanors. So we went to a Goodwill store to hang out, and I bought this ocarina for six dollars. After we stayed at the party long enough to see grandpa disappear and Santa appear and to eat up a bunch of the food, we headed home. It had rained all day except for a bit while we were picking up the beer.
    The ocarina is right about the size of a Coke can and made of glazed white ceramic (porcelain?). It plays very nicely and in tune in the key of C, so it was made with some knowledge and care. It sounds cool. I posted these pictures at the Musical Instrument Makers Forum, and the only guess anyone was willing to risk was that it is a bit of California hippy craft.
    More recently Richard Schmidt of Clayz.Com said he didn't know any more than that about its origin, but that he has made ocarinas in that style and calls it the "can style."