Placencia shoreline in 1977
Up until Hurricane Iris Placencia was still a the sleepy beautiful village. After Iris most of the wooden houses were gone and replaced with cement buildings. The fishing coop used to generate the power and the further you lived from the coop the lower the voltage got. So low that when the water pumps come on the lights went dim.
Douglas Cabral: Those are the greatest memories of all I remember as a kid after going through school, I was 14 years old, in school I tryed teaching it was good but i didn't like it after while, that's when I got my first permanent job at the placencia cooperative, now this could be a life time story for a lot of us in the village right now but me myself got my first job as a clerk in a grocery store at the placencia cooperative, that was the beginning, then worked in the processing plant, and after was chosen to work as a assistant to the chief mechanic, this is where we get to the story of the electric power in the village we had only a few lite poles most of the electric wire was attached to coconut trees, which became a problem after a while because whenever we would have a storm and the trees start swaing it would break the wires, but getting back to the voltage, at generating plant we would have 125 volts but at end of the line you're lucky if you got 80 volts, so this topic could be a long story I'm missing a lot to make a story short, but I can say the only place I never work was in the office of the placencia producer's cooperative. There was Red Cottage owned by Miss Evandne Hulse, then in front was the Blue Bird cottage, she also had a big fence yard with her living house and the Beach cottage for her visitor's, also was a library house and a teacher's quarter's across the side walk at the back.
See that stretch of sand there, try walking bare footed on it on a hot summer's day. If you're not from there your foot bottom would be burnt and blistered. Yet, Placencia residents would not only walk cross it in style but would stop and hold conversations. Or you walk on the grass and run from shade to shade.
Alvin Cabral from Placencia who lived exactly across from cooperative (the sidewalk goes between the two properties) was responsible to keep the all important ice machine working. Then he quit and another man from Monkey River took over Mr Daniel Wells, that man took care of the ice machine and electrics.
Mike Weller:
Placencia became my favorite vacation spot after I was invited by the Eiley bros, Laggy and Hairy Worm. They had done a masterful job on my inside staircase and wooden floor, using Santa Maria and made it look like mahogany. Laggy especially, was a skilled wood craftsmans, he also loved music.
David Gegg and his brothers worked at the Vouges hardware.
Photograph by Alan Jackson
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