Ritchie Retch

Mad River Union

MANILA, APRIL 1 – An Arcata man says the new lighthouse in Manila saved him from certain death after he got lost at the town’s disc golf course and spent eight days trying to find his way back to the parking lot.

Tony Growbro’s harrowing and inspiring tale of survival began on March 15 when he and a couple buddies met up at the park and made their way down the first fairway, chugging IPAs and smoking some fatty doobs, as required by the International Society of Disc Golfers (See rules, section. 43.2065 (a) and (b).

By the third fairway, Growbro was giggling, forgot where he had just tossed his disc 30 seconds prior, and decided to take in the view of the bay.

Growbro said he’s not sure how much time passed – it could have been two minutes or an hour – but next thing he knew the fog had rolled in and he was all alone.

“Off in the distance, I could hear someone laughing and yelling ‘Tony! See ya later bro,” Growbro recalled. “But all I could see was fog and the faint outline of a tree.”

Growbro said he wandered up and down the fairways, crossed over a softball field, followed a fence line, went through some trees, and found himself back where he had started.

He tried again, found the tennis courts, but was then back in the softball field and then returned to the trees.

As darkness fell, Growbro found himself in a vacant children’s playground and decided to bunk down there for the night. “Fortunately, I had some sweet dabs, some Humboldt GMO-free organic IPA and half a packet of organic American Spirit cigarettes, so I was able to make it through the night.”

“Early in the morning, before the sun came up, it dawned on me that the only way I was going to survive is if I saved myself,” Growbro recalled. So he walked east in search of the parking lot.

“The land was flat and I could see lights way off in the distance, so I started walking.” But when he found himself knee deep in the mud, he realized he was probably in Humboldt Bay. So he walked back in the other direction as the sun went down.

“Every once in awhile I’d see a person way off in the distance, and start to run towards them, but they disappeared like a mirage,” Growbro said.

Days went by, and he started to grow increasingly concerned.

“I was rich in dabs and consumed them frequently, but I had to ration the IPA, the cigs and my big bag of Annie’s Organic, GMO Free Pirate Booty Cheese Puffs."

Each day, the search for the parking lot grew more frantic.

On day 7, death stared him in the eye.

“I smoked my last dab. The Pirate Booty was gone. There was nothing but a backwash swallow of IPA, and I was down to my second to last cigarette,” Growbro said.

The next day, Growbro braced himself for death.

“I was out of dabs and extremely hungry,” he said. “I smoked my last cigarette, chugged down the IPA, then I saw it.”

Off in the distance, across the street, he saw, through the fog, a light coming from atop the lighthouse at Lighthouse Plaza.

“I think it was the Dos Equis sign,” Growbro said. “I walked toward it and, whoa, went right by my car in the parking lot. I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

Growbro passed his car and stumbled into Lighthouse Plaza, where he purchased a hot dog and a can of artificially sweetened Yerba mate grown by GMO-free, virgin, spiritually advanced Paraguayan elders.

“Quenching!” Growbro said before he ordered six more microwaved hot dogs. Growbro said he doesn’t plan to return to the disc golf course, but he would consider entering Manila’s miniature golf course. “Yeah, I would do that, but only with lots of friends and a GPS device,” he said.

The Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services had applied for a $1.2 million state grant to map the miniature golf course and the Manila Disc Golf Course to prevent potential tragedies.

“Growbro was lucky to get out of there alive,” said Sheriff William Honsal. “When you have a Bay on one side, the ocean on the other, and only a couple roads runnning north and south, anything’s possible.”

In related news

TSUNAMI SIREN The community of Kneeland will celebrate the completion of its new $1.5 million Tsunami Alert Siren on Friday. Located at the former Post Office location, the state-of-the-art siren is connected at an automated NOAA internet system via satellites and various redundant communication systems, guaranteeing that the mountaintop town will receive up-to-date information regarding tsunami hazards. Meanwhile, the towns of Samoa and Manila recently received rolls of duct tape, baling wire and World War II war ration stamps to help improve their 75-year-old sirens, which OES officials are praying will work in an upcoming test, although their faith is admittedly weak. “Hope is on the way,” one official said, admitting that her statement means that there is no actual hope, being that technically it has not yet arrived. Hope is merely in transit. When hope finally arrives, then the peninsula sirens may work, although that’s unlikely.















