License to serve

My husband, older son, and I spent the weekend in Duluth, helping friends get their new Canal Park restaurant ready to open later this month. After a day of schlepping waffle irons, shelving, and cookware from a third-floor storage space to the kitchen, using a hundred-year-old elevator whose gates you had to close with a strap, we headed to dinner — filthy, exhausted, ready to relax.

I won’t say where we went. But it was one of those bustling tourist meccas on the North Shore. I ordered a glass of Zinfandel, my husband did the same, our friend Cynthia ordered a Cabernet Sauvignon, and then my son piped up and said, “That sounds good. I believe I’ll have a glass of Cabernet, as well.”

Now, here’s what you should know about my son. He stands six-foot-three-and-a-half and has a full beard and a weary expression and a way of speaking that makes him sound as if he once wrote speeches for Winston Churchill. He’s also 19. . . .and autistic. So the arbitrary rules of society — like, for instance, you can be shipped off to fight in a senseless war at 18, but you can’t legally buy alcohol until you’re 21 — are lost on him.

I expected our server to ask for his ID, so I moved toward my son in order to explain and save him the embarrassment he might feel. But before I could say a thing, our server said, “Thanks! I’ll go get your drinks and be right back for your order.” And off she went. . . .

Later, after he’d drunk his glass of wine (which we felt conflicted about, but allowed rather than making a scene), we pulled our son aside and told him it is illegal for a restaurant to serve him alcohol. The woman who waited on us could have been fired, and the restaurant could have lost its liquor license. [His response: “Oh, is that so? How odd.”] I did not alert the manager, for fear of getting the poor, frazzled server in trouble.

But I’m warning them now, along with all the other packed, lakeside, summer-season restaurants in town. Have a talk with your staff. Tell them to card even those who appear to be of age. It’s the law — whether or not we agree. And the consequences of ignoring it can be pretty deadly for a hard-working restaurateur.