A Winters Tale

It began with a smell. Dan Winters was 9 years old, restless and growing up in rural Ventura County, California. He often hung out in the home of his boyhood friend Kenny Dalrymple, whose father happened to be Winters's 4-H mentor. He knew that his friend's dad had done combat photography in Vietnam and that he was now a keen amateur shooter. Winters also knew that his friend's home had a distinct acrid odor, which he would later identify as stop bath.