Many Hands Make Light Work

A Memoir

Cheryl Stritzel McCarthy

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781631526299
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

Many Hands Make Light Work is the rollicking true story of a family of nine children growing up in the college town of Ames, Iowa in the ’60s and ’70s. Inspiring, full of surprises, and laugh-out-loud funny, this utterly unique family champions diversity and inclusion long before such concepts become cultural flashpoints. Cheryl and her siblings are the offspring of an eccentric professor father and unflappable mother. Mindful of their ever-expanding family’s need for cash, her parents begin acquiring tumbledown houses in campus-town, to renovate and rent. Dad, who changes out of his suit and tie into a carpenter’s battered white overalls, like Clark Kent into Superman, is supremely confident his offspring can do anything, whether he’s there or not. Mom, an organizational genius disguised as a housewife, manages nine children so deftly that she finds the time—and heart—to take in student boarders, who stir their own offbeat personalities into this unconventional household. The kids, meanwhile, pour concrete, paint houses, and, at odd moments, break into song, because instead of complaining, they sing as they work, like a von Trapp family in painters caps. Free-wheeling and contagiously cheerful, Many Hands Make Light Work is a winsome memoir of a Heartland childhood unlike any other.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1. The Victorian Lady and the Baseball Team
• 2. July 1971. Above the Fruited Plain
• 3. How They Did It
• 4. 1964. Hammer-Shammus
• 5. 1963. Let Them Swim
• 6. 1971. Summertime, But the Livin’ Ain’t Easy
• 7. Autumn, Late 1960s. Scavenging
• 8. 1965. Don’t Run in the Building
• 9. 1970. Honeybunch and Honeybees
• 10. 1968. Weekend at the Lake
• 11. 1968. Details Make Perfection
• 12. 1969 and 1972. For I Have Sinned
• 13. 1969. Easter Magic
• 14. 1970. After Midnight
• 15. 1970. Piano Lessons
• 16. 1970. Built for the Ages
• 17. 1971. The Waif and the Amazon
• 18. 1970. Downtown, Where All the Lights Are Bright
• 19. 1970. On the Farm
• 20. 1970. Wait Till the Cows Come Home
• 21. 1970. Some Joker
• 22. Only the Brave Deserve the Fair
• 23. 1972. King of the Jungle
• 24. 1976. From Pittsburgh to Taiwan
• 25. 1969. Christmas
• Epilogue
• The Stritzel Diaspora
• Discussion Questions
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author