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Hoagy Carmichael: building bamboo fly rods, and Everett Garrison's legacy
Hoagy Carmichaelis the author of the most authoritative and legendary book on building bamboo fly rods:
Mr Carmichael, I must say is a part of History himself. The son of famous American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and band leader Hoagy Carmichael (1899 - 1981), he is a very cheerful, outspoken and witty person and himself a natural testimony of that world of the "famous and the rich". It was quite impressing for instance, to hear him telling us how he used to be carried in the back of a byke driven by his family's friend Cary Grant when a child...Which thing he tells without any tone of superiority, but just as a nice memory. 
Hoagy met Everett Garrison while fishing at the Catskill river, in New York state in the seventies.A friendship started and culminated in the production of a documentary on bamboo rodmaking with Garrison himself (the first ever movie about this craft). Immediately after the movie, Mr Carmichael had the idea to write a book and promised Mr Garrison, already in his last year, to hold with the idea. Mr Carmichael started writing the book 7 months after Mr. Garrison died. Never could he have imagined that he was going to start a journey and that the book would be not only a great success but also a "cult" book and Mr Garrison's legacy. The craft of bamboo rod making became known to an even wider audience for the first time ever. So far 26'000 copies of the book have been published and sold and it doesn't look like that the wave is stopping, quite the contrary. (continues...)
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