I would ask that everyone who owns music boxes, player pianos
and reproducing pianos, to ask themselves a very hard question:
"What will happen to our efforts, organizations and instruments
after our lifetime?"

For reasons that are not hard to appreciate, we are likely to tell our
kids, "Don't touch that piano."  We don't want them to break something.
But I feel that we (including myself) are doing them a great
disservice.  Children will be adults all too soon, and it is in them
where the future of mechanical music is, if we just encourage them.

In The original advertising for automatic music makers, the companies
appealed to the younger set, children in particular.  Multitudes of
player pianos were sold simply because the household had children.
Mom and Dad would not have bought one otherwise.

So what are we doing to get future generations interested in these
great marvels of the past?  Not much, I am afraid.  Most auto-music
organizations of today view children as a "bother" and the program or
gathering does not include them.  That type of thinking will come back
to bite them in the seat of the pants thirty or forty years from now.
It is a grave and short-sighted mistake, _mark my words._

I am not saying to let a herd of wild kids loose in a room full of
antiques.  But I am also saying, "Let the children see and hear _and be
a part of_ some of these wonderful machines."  The look on a child's
face when they hear a band organ is just as priceless as the machine
itself!

I keep a beat-up old upright around for my five-year-old.  They are
cheap, and it entertains him for hours.  (Now if he will just keep from
taking it apart like he sees us do!)  The only five-year-old who knows
how to remove a upright action!  But that is okay.  His love for pianos
assures me that our restored pianos will be taken care of and not
thrown out and scrapped due to his resentment of excluding him from
the hobby.

Wouldn't it have been wonderful if J. Lawrence Cook had passed down his
musical knowledge?  How many of us search for a certain item of our
youth, like Andy and his art-case Foster piano.  If his parents hadn't
allowed him to touch it, what good would that piano have served?
_Nothing._  He wanted to replace that piano.  The odds were not good,
and the example he found was not very good at all.  He told me of it
were not for the fact that is was the right model, he would have never
considered it for restoring.

I apologize for this article being so long, but I do feel that it is
a point that should be discussed.  The future of our life long efforts
depends upon it.

Best Regards

Christiene Taylor
Tempola Music Rolls "and a MOM"