The little outlet that could

Like I mentioned to some of mycommenter friends; we narrowly avoided a major house fire. The Thursday after Christmas I was up late making lasagna, no big deal right? Wrong! I have an old mixer, like so many other old things in my house, and it got very hot. When my husband came home, shortly after I put the lasagnas in the oven, I told him about the mixer. I told him the plug was so hot when I pulled it out of the wall that it burnt my hand and I was going to throw it away. He asked if I was certain it was the mixer. Uh, oh.. I plugged the mixer into another outlet and it ran without even getting warm. So he pulled the kitchen table away from the wall and the wall was actually glowing. THE OUTLET WAS ON FIRE!! He ran downstairs and cut the power to that outlet, which also cut power to a few other lights-joy. The next step was getting the volt meter to make sure the power was dead. When certain the power was cut, he removed the outlet from wall and the blue box was melted and the wires were smoldering. At least there was no actual fire. So we waited from there to make sure the wall was cooling down or the fire department would have to be called. We were up until 3 AM. So, yes, this was the little outlet that could have burned down our house via a wall fire then spreading. Fire would have raced up our steps like an Olympian. All because of one loose wire. One loose wire caused all the arcing that burt the wire. Narrow, my friends, narrow.