POP/ROCK - Jan. 27, 1989

The first electric guitar that surf-rock pioneer Dick Dale ever picked has been stolen from the Surf Museum in Huntington Beach. “I’m still numb,” says Dale, who lives in Huntington Beach. The thief “couldn’t have been a real surfer. Real surfers don’t do that. It’s got to be some misguided fool.” Dale bought the white guitar with a rosewood neck at a Los Angeles pawn shop for $200 in 1955. He gave it to the museum when it opened July 30, and had hoped to use it this fall at a concert for the U.S. Air Force at the Berlin Wall in West Germany.