ST. MICHAELS -- Here's a state law somebody's mother must have thought up: Imbibers in Garrett County are not allowed to run up a bar tab.

Here's another one: In Frederick County, forget about snagging beer from a drive-through window. State law says no.

Hiding from the spouse while indulging in Charles County? Careful. Taverns down south must have at least one clear window -- unobstructed from street view. The law says so.

The number of laws covering liquor consumption and sales in Maryland is, well, staggering. Sections and subsections cover 523 pages, with different laws for every county, outlining everything but minimum requirements for toasts offered with shots of Irish whiskey.

But here is something not found within those laws: A minimum age for waiters in Talbot County to serve alcohol. While bartenders are required to be 21, no state law applies to waiters in Talbot. So, on this spit of land where fishermen down cold beers next to antiquers sipping cocktails, both the suds and the booze are being slung by waiters as young as 15.

That, though, may change.

Much to the consternation of some restaurant owners, the Talbot County Council is considering a bill that would require waiters to be at least 18 before they can serve alcohol -- and an additional push is under way to raise the age to 21. A vote is scheduled for today.

"The irony is that in Talbot County you have to be 21 to know how much vermouth goes into a martini but only 15 to know whether someone can handle another drink," said Philip Carey Foster, the County Council's vice president.

"People who don't even have a driver's license are being put into a position to determine whether someone's sober enough to drive or not."

Supporters of the bill say they're not concerned about young waiters sipping drinks on the way to the tables. Rather, they say, it's too much to expect someone younger than age 18 to consistently request identification, determine whether that identification is fake and judge whether patrons have become too drunk and should be cut off.

"It's not fair to put that kind of responsibility on kids that age," said Janet Pfeffer, director of the Talbot Partnership for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention. "We're the only county in Maryland, we think the only place in the United States -- maybe in the world, as far as anybody here knows -- that has 15-year-old kids serving alcohol. It's crazy."

What's crazy, argue restaurant owners who depend on younger waiters, is expecting to find enough workers older than age 18 -- let alone age 21 -- to work in restaurants.

Talbot County employs more than 2,300 people in tourism-related businesses. Many of those workers are young people who staff the restaurants in Easton, Tilghman Island and St. Michaels, where main streets bustle during the summer with people.

"I don't know that we'd be able to staff fully in the summertime," said Debbie Livingston, who does the hiring for Carpenter Street Saloon, a bar and restaurant on the main drag in St. Michaels. "You can't get anybody but kids to bus the tables. We'd lose a couple of waitresses, too."

In the summer, Livingston said, the restaurants in town can be so busy that all employees -- of every age -- have to pitch in, helping each other regardless of their specific job. That means an under-18 waiter might have trouble finding an over-18 manager to run drinks. And the bus staff, the youngest in the establishments, are often called on to help waiters -- including running drinks to patrons.

In St. Michaels' top-scale establishments, where waiters can make enough money to pay rent, the higher income means a steady supply of older applicants. Which, perhaps in turn, has led the smaller, more upscale restaurants to support raising the serving age.

"Oh, I thought the age ought to be 21," said Perry Thomas, the owner of Suddenly Last Summer. "One, if they're older, they've had more experience dealing with someone who may have had too much to drink. Two, a 15-year-old waiter? I just don't think so."

But Erin Spurry, who turned 16 yesterday, has been waiting tables since she was 14 and has never had a serious problem with a drunken customer. Like other younger waitresses, she is instructed to retrieve an older manager if she has trouble with patrons. She had to do that on only a few occasions.

"I don't think it hurts me to just drop off a couple of drinks at a table," she said. "If I have a problem, I just have to get someone."

Becky Schuettpeltz, a bartender at Yesteryears in Easton, said if she had not been able to wait tables when she was younger, she would have had no income.

"That's how I supported myself," said the 24-year-old. "There's not a whole lot of other kinds of jobs around here. As long as they're trained properly, they can do it."

Talbot's ability to allow younger kids to serve booze came about the old-fashioned way: through politics. In 1973, Thomas Hunter Lowe, speaker of the House of Delegates and a Talbot County resident, pushed through Section 18-101 of the Annotated Code of Maryland.

That provision says Talbot County can do whatever it wants with its liquor laws, regardless of what the state decides. While other jurisdictions must go through the General Assembly to create exceptions to specific parts of the law, the Talbot County Council has the authority to change its laws.

"It's led to a lot of quirks," said Foster, the council member, "but this serving age is the most indefensible of them all."

Pub Date: 3/30/99