I've been hearing a lot lately about adult businesses. I assume they mean clothing stores that cater exclusively to grown-ups.

Either that or they are talking about book stores that sell those large-print books and deal mainly with senior citizens.

Not that I have anything against young people. I know a number of folks who are still in their 40s and there is nothing wrong with most of them. I have trouble dealing with some 30-year-olds, but even that age group has its good points. My granddaughter is in that bracket and she's perfectly well mannered.

I even get along well with teen aged persons and the younger ones if they are housebroken and don't bite. It's just that sometimes I like to be in business establishments where there are only people of my age or not more than 20 years younger.

Take the clothing stores, for example. Since I do most of my clothes shopping at thrift shops, I rarely go into those that sell previously un-owned garments. When I do enter such places, I'm always put off by the sizes. I like a place that begins its trouser waist measurements at 38 and moves up from there. I don't want my pants or anything else hugging my hips and I would prefer having the waist of what I wear fall fairly close to my natural waist. I hope whoever starts up these adult businesses keeps that in mind.

Another type of enterprise I would like to see limited to persons of the mature persuasion is record shops. Understand, I don't expect any music store to limit itself to the classics. I'm as open to Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller as the next one. But I don't want to plow through banks of rap music and albums with dead people on the cover to get to something reasonably decent.

I don't suppose you can ban young people from the movies or have a separate theater for just adults, but I would suggest a compromise. In Virginia, we were members of a community pool where children outnumbered parents about four to one. The little ones were so packed in that it was worth your life to enter if you were over 20. Once every hour, however, they cleared the kids out of the pool and let the adults swim unmolested for 10 minutes. I would think the movies could do something of that sort.

New car dealers already cater mainly to people over 18, but I would set the bar higher. I would not let anybody buy a new car before he or she was at least 40. Young people can't afford anything but used cars and it only teaches them bad financial habits to let them have new ones before they are old enough.

I also would ban the sale of small, red sports cars, new or used, to anyone who has adolescent children. Either that, or require that they put some kind of V chip into it so under-age children can't operate it. Forget about what your kids are watching on TV. It's what they can do in a little, red sports car that ought to worry you.

Another adult business that ought to be off limits to children is the toy store. Kids don't buy toys and they have no business in there running the train sets and breaking the Tonka trucks. Anybody who has been in a Toys-R-Us knows that small children are the last thing you want around when you are trying to shop.

I also would limit the number of small children let into town meetings and political gatherings. Most probably would not understand what was going on in any case and you don't want them exposed to that kind of violence and bad language. They would be better off going to bars and wrestling matches.

There is one other kind of adult business from which children should be protected at all costs. This is to prevent impressionable young minds from material with which they are not equipped to deal. In my opinion, no youngster below the age of 21 should be allowed near a newspaper office.

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