I have been watching YouTube to save my sanity.

I can watch something that’s far from the prevailing news and commentary, as well as sitcoms trying to repeat what was funny when my sons were small.

My eldest son pretty much governed what his brothers watched. When Mary went blind on “Little House on The Prairie,” the show went off our television watching menu — or at least I thought it had.

Later, my adult sons began watching reruns, ushered in by a very apologetic senior son.

He now realizes he missed out on a good show and took his brothers along.

As a matter of fact, there is an oldies channel where he lives, in Pueblo, and we watched Roy Rogers for several hours when I was visiting.

We also watched Gene Autrey and I was left with an unanswered question. If the star, famed as a “singing cowboy,” decides to vocalize by the campfire, where did he hide the background singers and band who suddenly appeared?

I also wondered how the star wrestled the bad guy down a hill and lost neither his white hat nor even one strand of decoration on his shirt and how his pistol fired 30 shots and didn’t hit anyone.

Venturing into the past is fun.

YouTube has some sites where I can view hundreds of old “historic” photographs and I have to laugh.

How is Marilyn Monroe part of our history? I’m sure lots of men think she is. In fact, they have posters on their walls showing her in all her “glory.”

Seeing photos of her and other “bombshells” like Jayne Mansfield and pin-up girls from World War II have helped me understand the mindset of the men who didn’t know if they would return home from the war.

There are a few from Korea, called “the forgotten war,” though it is actually still going on.

There is a cease fire, but no peace pact, no armistice, just a few periods of gunfire across the demilitarized zone and “meetings” between the leaders to prove it’s still there.

We are still involved in the “Cold War” and people still die.

In self-preservation, I have watched a guitar player who is so bad people attend his concerts to throw things at him.

He books the gigs and people crowd the venues. Maybe I had a future as a guitarist.

His wife sings and she’s worse than I am. That’s been proven and I draw jeers at karaoke.

So I write. It saves my sanity and no one watches me make a fool of myself.

Late at night, I watch videos and clips where people film homes, cabins and mansions that have been abandoned, many with all the inhabitants’ belongings still in place.

I think about the people who left home so rapidly, then I recall the cliff dwellings where food was still in the bowls and where Anasazi beans were found still fertile enough to reproduce.

There’s always hope.