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You are right. Actually, my first set in 1948 was a Gilbert, and it had KNO₃ in it, with instructions of how to make something that ignites and flashes very satisfactorily, probably with sulfur and charcoal. That got used up very quickly, and I was sad when it was gone. Later on, we moved to a larger town with a real drug store. That Christmas I was given a much larger Chemcraft set, but guess what? No potassium nitrate! Boy, was I chagrined! Then I thought of going to the drug store, and sure enough! I could buy KNO₃ (saltpeter) a bottle at a time. The druggist was a bit cocerned, but I told him it was for my chemistry experiments and knew it wasn't for sprinkling on food. So I happily went on with mixing up my ingredients, trying to reproduced the forgotten proportions from the Gilbert year. But all I got was a choking cloud of sulfur smoke, without the bang I was hoping for. It did finally turn out that I got PhD in chemistry, though.

But Gilbert started it all, of which company I also got an Erector set another year, which occupied me hours and hours. My first degree was as an engineer . . . Today, I don't think kids would be allowed to have or buy the stuff that was not troubling back in the early 60s.

I love your story. So many of us who grew up with jack knives in our pockets, Gilbert sets and no bicycle helmets made it OK.

Whenever my brother was away from home, I'd play with his chemistry set and he would come home and yell at me...that I was using up all the chemicals.

Turns out, he was marking the bottle with a line on the label and *showed me* how he knew I was *touching his stuff*! Good times.

I recently found a Gilbert set at an estate sale. It was primo; looked to me that no one used it, all the pieces were still in tact. I bought it for my neighbor, who *remembers when* and was tickled pink to have a relic from his childhood.

I still have my bro's Erector Set; it's apparently worthless b/c it has missing parts; that's b/c it was used a lot.