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HIGH POINT — Paul Szydlik loved that bass. He called it “The Other Woman.”

He bought it 14 years ago in California for $2,500. A 1963 Fender bass, beautiful blue, with a beautiful tone. Paul played it so much that his belt buckle rubbed the wood raw.

Today, that bass is gone. Six weeks ago, burglars stole it.

It happened on a Saturday, in the middle of the afternoon, in a middle-class neighborhood off Johnson Street. Paul was minding his family’s music store near their home as his wife Cathy sold musical accessories at a band competition at Ragsdale High.

As they worked, burglars worked over their house. They kicked in the back door and stole $12,000 worth of stuff. A video camera, a phone system, collectible coins, $1,500 in cash and two basses. One was “The Other Woman.”

Paul was sick. Literally sick. The burglars had hit him where it hurts.

A longtime musician, a father of two grown children, Paul started his “little bitty music store” out of his garage a decade ago.

Five years ago, he moved from his garage to a storefront he leased near his home. To help him run his store, he brought in the very person he met nearly 26 years ago, in a bar, the night before a gig in Massachusetts, his home state.

His wife, Cathy.

He named their store Yesterday’s Music. Today, he and Cathy have five instructors, one rehearsal room for bands, one auditorium for video shoots and enough space for Paul’s memorabilia from The Beatles.

And there, at the bottom of a blacktop parking lot off North Main, Cathy and Paul call customers by first name.

Ask about the cymbal and plaque on the wall, and you’ll hear Cathy talk about a favorite customer who died of liver cancer 18 months ago.

Ask about the girl coming in with the broken keyboard, and you’ll hear how Paul found a repair guy for her at no charge.

Or ask about the guy coming in dressed as Santa, requesting donations for underprivileged kids, and you’ll hear how Paul gave him maracas and tambourines.

But if it’s the summer or if it’s warm, simply ask for a chair. You can plop on the sidewalk outside and sit there for hours and hear a cop, a teacher, an airline mechanic — all moonlighting musicians — talk about everything except politics.

Yet, ask about the stolen bass, and you’ll see Paul wince.

“It was like this big sinking feeling in my stomach,” says Paul, 50. “It was like losing a friend. You play so many different instruments, but that was the magical one.”

But here’s the Christmas twist.

Since last fall, Cathy’s been saving what she calls “pin money.” It’s the few extra dollars, the few extra coins she held onto by the day’s end. She had heard Paul get really jazzed about a 1974 Fender bass guitar one of the store’s music reps had found.

“Hold that bass for me,” she told the music rep on the sly.

After saving $2,000, she bought the guitar and hid it in their spare bedroom, thinking it would be a cool Christmas present for her husband this year.

Then came the break-in. The next day, as Paul slept on the couch –— “curled up like a shrimp,” he says — Cathy wrote “Merry Christmas Early” on a paper plate and put the note, the guitar and its case on their bed.

He woke up and walked into their bedroom. He couldn’t suppress his surprise.

“What’s this? You did this?”

Yes, she did.

“That was a lot of money,” Cathy says, “but something said, 'Just do it.’ He was heartbroken, and yeah, he needed that. He really did.”

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com