Ole Roy may surprise you a bit yet, Gkeese.  You get that bridge trimmed and a set of "ok" strings on.. Looks to at least be made of maybe something like maple and spruce.  There may be some voice lurking in there.  Oh, not at all likely a "concert" sort of voice, but maybe an interesting and likeable "back porch" or "camping trip" voice or something. There's just no telling.

Once you get all 4 strings on it, you'll be able to check the fingerboard and start working on the bridge and getting some sound out of Ole Roy there.

I can tell you that with my acoustic, when I first got it I wasn't too impressed with it as an instrument.  It was a gift from family, so it came with sentimental value already attached.  But when I first tuned it up and tried playing it a little.. Well, the action was like a cheese slicer, the string spacing was just whacked, and I honestly think I could have maybe gotten better sound out of stringing up the cardboard box it came in.  But after putting in some work and fussing over the bridge and tailpiece placement a few days, she's not so bad and has a sound I rather like.  At least, her sound fits some songs rather well.  Fun to play, anyway.

But you can learn quite a bit from an instrument that needs some work.  So far as understanding construction and knowing what to look for in a more expensive instrument later, you can probably learn more than most folks who start on something better where everything is all set up right.

Now, on the constructive side.. About those tuning pegs.  Both my electric which has plastic pegs in a plastic pegbox and the acoustic where it was painted wood pegs in bare wood holes in a wood pegbox, I have them both holding tune quite well.  With the painted wood, I scraped off the paint.  And with both of them, I took some fairly rough sandpaper, like 150-200 grit cheap stuff.  I just pinched the sandpaper around the shaft of the peg and pulled it through several times until they had sandpaper scratches running down the length of the peg shaft.  Both instruments were a little stiff at first on tuning, and got to turning nice but holding well within a few days.  Well, the acoustic still is a little stiff on the D peg, but it will smooth out over time, I'm pretty sure.  Didn't use any peg drops or compound on either instrument and it isn't real hard to tune either one from just the pegs.  It is a simple cheap fix and so far over two months I have never had to repeat it.  I did the same thing when my oud was new and had some pegs that slipped a bit and in the 3 yrs since, they have never been a problem.

Just a thought for you there.