ON THE HOUSE

I well remember on many occasions in my earlier years seeing two of – shall we say – Manor’s “less-reputable” businesses. They were the local nightspots / saloons. One was the Blue Front Bar and the other was known as the House of Blue Lights. From newspaper stories, it appears that the House of Blue Lights may have been the spot where more of the “less-reputable” action took place.

In the the October 21, 1961 edition of The Austin Statesman, the headline read “CENTEX MAN SHOT IN FRAY", and then went on to give these details; “Sheriff’s officers jailed a 30 year old woman early Saturday in the midnight gun play at the House of Blue Lights in Manor that hospitalized a 44 year old Bastrop man with a gunshot wound to the head…John Brown was reported in critical condition at Breckenridge Hospital…Norman Martin, manager of the club, …said the first anyone realized there was trouble brewing was when a shot was fired and Brown fell to the floor.”

Two days later, the woman, identified as Bertha Crenshaw, was charged with murder after Brown died. Testimony got under way in the trial on May 1, 1962. Miss Crenshaw pleaded “not guilty” to the murder charge but admitted on the witness stand that she had shot Brown. 

“I shot him because I was afraid of him”, she told the jury. “He told me he was going to get me like the woman in Bastrop. He said he shot her and buried her.” The jury found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to a 5 year term in the penitentiary.

Brown’s widow testified during the trial that her husband had killed a woman in Bastrop and had served a 6 year sentence for that murder. 

Later that same year a brawl in front of the House of Blue Lights resulted in the stabbing of a 22 year old man. The Statesman newspaper said;

A few years later, in July, 1965 , a Travis County grand jury no-billed eight men in connection with a fight at the House of Blue Lights. 

Perhaps this kind of unsavory behavior may have started about 5 years earlier in July of 1960 when, according to a story in The Austin Statesman, Thomas Pollard, the 54 year old operator of the House of Blue Lights received a two year probated sentence after admitting that he had paid $9 for three stolen sheep and then sold barbecued mutton for $1.50 per pound. 

Apparently it all just went down hill from there.