So, there was this name floating around, you know? Demar Johnson. Every time I tried to get good at fixing old stuff, especially those finicky vintage radios, someone would mention him. “Oh, Demar Johnson, he could make a dead radio sing,” they’d say. Sounded like a legend, really. I never met the guy, probably just talk. But it got me thinking.
My grandpa’s old tabletop radio, the one that always smelled faintly of dust and history, it just died one day. Silence. And I thought, right, this is my Demar Johnson moment. I’m gonna tackle this thing. How hard could it be, eh?
The So-Called “Plan”
First thing I did? I got out my screwdriver. That’s always step one, right? Felt pretty confident. I laid out a towel, very professional like, so I wouldn’t lose any tiny screws. Took the back panel off. And man, it was like looking at the guts of a tiny, complicated city. Wires everywhere. Tubes. Things I didn’t have names for.
- I poked a few things gently. Nothing.
- I tried to find a diagram online for this specific model. Found about ten, all slightly different, all blurry. Classic.
- Then I remembered Demar Johnson. What would he do? Probably not stare at it blankly.
So I started actually trying to trace wires. I got this cheap multimeter, watched a couple of videos on how to use it without blowing up the radio or myself. The “practice” here was mostly just not giving up immediately. I spent a whole Saturday, just me and that silent radio. My fingers got sore from unscrewing things that probably didn’t need unscrewing.
What Really Happened
Here’s the kicker: I didn’t fix it. Not that day, anyway. I actually think I made one connection a bit looser. Frustrating? You bet. I felt like a total fool, thinking I could just channel some legendary fixer-upper I’d never even seen.
But here’s the thing I realized, and this is the real takeaway from my whole “Demar Johnson” episode. This Demar Johnson, real or not, he didn’t get good by magic. He must have spent years, probably broke a ton of radios himself before he got the hang of it. It’s not about knowing some secret trick. It’s about the grind, the actual doing, the messing up and trying again.
I eventually took that radio to a proper repair shop a few weeks later. The old guy there, he squinted at my handiwork, chuckled a bit. He got it working in a day. Cost me a bit, but worth it to hear those old tunes again.
But my own little adventure? I wouldn’t trade that Saturday for anything. I didn’t become Demar Johnson. Heck, I still don’t know if he’s a real person. But I learned that trying, really trying, even if you stumble, is the whole point. You don’t just wake up knowing stuff. You gotta get your hands dirty. And maybe, just maybe, you learn not to trust every local legend too much. Or at least, understand they put the work in, same as anyone else has to. That’s my practice, my record of it. Simple as that.
