“Began buying up jar after jar of Salt Peter and sulfur from the drug store.”
Ha, ha, that brings back memories too. I found out that the drug store in my neighborhood (at that time a near-exurb of Chicago) sold saltpeter which supposedly (?) controlled heat in horses and other farm animals. So, I bought a little bit, and made Dangerous Stuff with it. My friend was interested in where I got it from. I told him and reminded him to only buy a little so that the druggist wouldn’t wonder what we were doing with it. So, he goes and asks for the COLOSSAL sized container. The druggist asked “What are you going to do with it?” My friend panicked, and he said “I don’t know - it’s for my mother!” The druggist told him to get the #$@$# out of there and that was the end of our chemistry career.
You could get anything by ordering from the ads in the back of Popular Science. I’d order M-80 like silver salute tubes and end caps and fuse.
At the 4th and New Years, kids would bring me their firecrackers. And for a cut, I’d supply them with some larger firecrackers.
By high school, I was into Contact Explosives. That really got things popping along.