The Empty Room was the center for Mom's sewing machine which was always busy. During our early years she made all of our clothes from shirts to the knee-high knickers we wore during our elementary years, as well as work dresses and aprons for herself. This room was also the storage space for our toys and games, and our baseball bats, balls and gloves were stored in a corner.
It became our inside playroom during the winter. We put mats and blankets on the floor and did our roughhousing there. We read books there and played cards and games. There was a door connecting it to the dining area - off the kitchen - which really was used as the living room, again sparsely furnished early on. It wasn't until much later that when all of the boys were in high school that a living room and a dining room set were purchased for these two room.
About 1935, my folks purchased an old player piano for $15. It came with dozens of piano rolls and it was set up in the dining area. It was fascinating to place a roll in the headboard of the piano and then pump the pedals with both feet and see the "keys being played" and hear the music. The piano rolls had various indentations cut into the rolls and these responded to the different keys when the air passed through them.
We used to take turns pumping until our legs were tired and we sang along and soon learned may of the early 1900's popular songs like "Come Along With Me, Lucille, In My Merry Oldsmobile" and "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze." I can still sing the opening lyrics to dozens of these songs 60 or so years later.
Mom must have felt that with our interest in the player piano that Lou and I (then about 12 and 10 years old) were musically inclined, and decided to dip into their meager funds to have us take piano lessons. We went to a nice older lady in town weekly about a year for lessons. Mom made sure that we practiced regularly, but we sometimes shortened the practice up hurriedly if a gang was waiting to start a ball game.
We even took part in a recital our teacher put on in town for her students. Mom attended, and she either decided that we had made sufficient progress, or that we were completely untalented, because she had no great objection when we told her we wanted to stop taking lessons.
From the time that our house was built in 1927 until 1939, the living room area was never furnished because of the lack of money during those tough times, and that room in the house was always referred to by all in the family as The Empty Room. There was no rug on the floor or couch or stuffed chairs, just several mismatched chairs. It was also used as a storage area for miscellaneous boxes.