Petty criminal or terrorist?

While waiting in the boarding area for my flight from San Antonio a young middle eastern boy, 13 or 14, sits down beside me. He remains their for, perhaps, 15 or so minutes. When he gets up to leave, he nonchalantly grabs the pull handle of my suitcase upon which is hung my leather jacket and proceeds to leave with it.
I grabbed the side of the pull handle, stopping his progress, and said, " you can leave that here!"
He looked me straight in the eye and challenged me by saying, " is this yours?"
He waited until I said yes before letting go and walking nonchalantly away.

He and his family, father, mother and two younger siblings , each with two suitcases, boarded my flight.

 

We made our annual trip to San Antonio, Texas last week.  We've made this trip for at least 10 years maybe longer.  We go for a number of reasons; I attend a continuing education conference. 

 

 

 Conveniently, our older grand daughters live in Corpus Christi, Texas and usually come up to visit us while we're so close and spend a couple days with us.  Grandma takes them Christmas shopping and we do the Riverwalk up right.  This year was different in a couple of ways: the conference was held a week early,  we flew separately, with different timelines, and I with a different airline.  Because of school, the girls were unable to join us, and Diane, having had total knee surgery just 5 weeks prior, came down a few days after me; I arrived on Sunday the 15th and she arrived Tues. night of the 17th.

 

The weather was perfect; 70's during the day with little humidity. I did my longer walks, to old touch stones on Sunday and Monday.  Diane's endurance and mobility being limited we stayed pretty close to the hotel. 

 

Of course, day one, I made my way to Waxy's Irish pub on the Riverwalk for my yearly, Guinness, Jameson's, and a Montecristo cigar.  Yes I ate lunch also.

 

As I said, for the first couple of days after Di arrived we stayed pretty close to our hotel, venturing a little further each day.  Sitting by the river in front of the hotel gave us ample opportunity to people watch.

 

 

On Friday, we made our longest excursion, walking to the Menger Hotel and back.  Passing, on the way, the Briscoe Western Art Museum.  Regretfully we did not go in but took pictures of the sculptures out side.

 

At the suggestion of a friend, I took a walk on Monday, after class, to find a restaurant, Mitera, which he recommended.  And find it I did, inside a great little shopping area, Market Square.  I didn't eat there solely because I don't like eating in restaurants by myself.

Walking back to the hotel I passed by author O'Henry's house.

 Mitera

 

We decided to get a western get-up picture taken on our way back to our hotel from Menger's.

A souvenir of, probably, our last excursion to San Antonio.

Things change;  the path of continuing-ed is changing and conferences such as these will fall by the wayside.   Our grand daughters are growing/grown up and are moving on with their lives.