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"I'm just a hand liner. I put lines on," says Kevin Manypenny. He's been working here for nearly 40 years.

He twirls a plate, dips a brush in brown glaze and paints three delicate lines on the plate's edge. Fiesta is about half of Homer Laughlin's business — the other half is dinnerware for hotels, and the sturdy plates and cups you find at chain restaurants. The plate he's working on is for a Boston restaurant.

Manypenny and seven of his eight siblings — and their parents — have worked at this factory. And there are dozens of families like theirs. Brothers founded the company: Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin — presumably a literary family — jumped on a new fashion for a whiter, more refined dinnerware.

"They were the young whippersnappers in the pottery world, and they were the ones who ended up successfully firing four kilns worth of whiteware before any of the other potteries could, and then they won a prize of $5,000 ... and that's what launched the Laughlin brothers into pottery production on a big scale," says Sarah Vodrey of the Museum of Ceramics across the river in East Liverpool, Ohio, where Homer Laughlin used to be based.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the factory changed hands. The new team built a plant on the West Virginia side of the river, and those long, low factory buildings are still in use today.

Then, in the 1930s, the company created Fiesta: inexpensive, colorful, cheerful dinnerware. It was a hit even in the Depression. In 1948, Homer Laughlin really stepped up the production of plates and bowls. The company designed and built its own machine inside the factory. Dave Conley, a longtime employee and unofficial company historian, calls it "the big, flat automatic."

Credit: The "big, flat automatic" machine allows Homer Laughlin to mass produce multiple types of items at once. (Ross Mantle for NPR)

"You've got three machines here, and each one has two heads on it, so theoretically we could be making six different items at a time," he says. Conley says that's 3,000 dozen pieces — or 36,000 pieces of pottery — every eight-hour shift. (People who make dishes talk in dozens.)

There have been improvements. Computers control the firing now. 3-D printers speed the design process. Ceramic engineers found a way to make glaze shiny without using lead — all in house.

"The people that owned our company have always put profits back into the plant to modernize, and we've always had state of the art equipment [like the big, flat automatic], and I call that state of the art even though that's as old as it is — it's almost 60 years old," Conley says.

Credit: Fiesta salt shakers are sent down the line to be glazed. (Ross Mantle for NPR)

Fiesta Revival

Inside the old buildings, with fog pouring off the Ohio River and drifting into the windows, the ware comes out of the fire, magically transformed — creamy orange, intense red, vivid turquoise. Bright pottery is stacked in bins and crates and piled all over the place.

"I remember the first time I actually went to the facility, and I'm looking around and I'm thinking, 'Boy, am I back in the 1940s or what?' I mean, even the office, it isn't all spruced up," says Bruce Smith, the head of the union representing the pottery workers. "It's the old look, and they're focused on making product and not being flashy." He says while nothing about Homer Laughlin is flashy, the workers do make decent money.

Calling All Fiesta Fans

Brighten your day: Photos of Fiesta dishes that NPR listeners submitted to Instagram. You can submit your own via Instagram; just tag them #NPRfiesta

"They're good jobs and they're making a living, being able to buy a home and raise a family and retire with some dignity," Smith says.

Both management and labor consider that an achievement.

"I'm very proud to have kept this business here in the Ohio Valley. That's very important to us," says Elizabeth Wells McIlvain, the first woman to lead Homer Laughlin, and the fourth generation of her family at the plant. Her immediate family now owns most of the business. Her daughter, Maggie, is an intern in the marketing department.

Homer Laughlin stopped producing Fiesta for a time beginning in 1973. A harvest gold color and an avocado green didn't sell. But in 1986, Bloomingdale's came calling, looking for a retro china for its stores, and Homer Laughlin made a typical, practical decision: restart an old line and revive Fiesta for retail sale along with its existing hotel and restaurant business.

"We have two sides of the business, and that's helped us tremendously because it seems when ... the retail side of the business is flourishing, the hotel side is ... having difficulties, and vice versa," McIlvain says.

Pallets of Fiesta pieces are lined up in preparation for an upcoming retail outlet tent sale at Homer Laughlin in Newell, W.Va. Ross Mantle for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ross Mantle for NPR

It helps that Fiesta has a big fan base. Collectors stand in line for hours to get into the factory tent sales. Fans meet, they swap, they critique the company's color choices. And they wait for the new Fiesta color unveiled each March. (The color for 2014 is poppy, a bold, saturated orange.)

"They always have suggestions. One year they all wanted fuchsia, and they all arrived to Homer Laughlin to go on their tours dressed in whatever fuchsia they had. That was their silent but very loud statement," McIlvain says.

But she offered no color clues for this coming March. "That's a very deep, dark secret," she says with a laugh.

fiesta

homer laughlin

With oil around $85 a barrel and tumbling to its lowest levels in several years, here's the upside: Gasoline prices are down, the U.S. is feeling less dependent on foreign crude, and serious economic pressure is growing on oil producers such as Iran and Russia.

Here's the downside: The low demand for oil reflects a fragile global economy that's vulnerable to additional shocks, like falling stock markets around the world.

Oil is still a uniquely influential commodity. Whenever prices move sharply in either direction, they unleash ripples around the globe that are both economic and political.

"We've had a three-year period of very stable oil prices," Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations told NPR's All Things Considered. "Three years is a long time. People were starting to believe that this was permanent. And they were wrong. So the big news is that volatility is back, that big swings are what we should expect."

With the prices down around 25 percent since hitting $112 a barrel in June, here's a roundup of the impact worldwide:

Political Turmoil, Falling Prices: Something strange is happening. Three key oil producers (Iraq, Libya and Nigeria) are mired in domestic turbulence, and Iran's oil exports have been dramatically reduced by international sanctions.

In years past, trouble in these countries might have instigated panic in the oil market, driving up prices dramatically. But today, there's plenty of oil to go around for several reasons. Production in the United States is surging, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries have continued to pump at high levels, and overall global demand is weak.

While these conditions may not last, they do reflect what's been the steady loss of clout among big oil producers, particularly those in the Middle East.

The U.S. is producing more of its own oil and is buying the remainder from a wide range of mostly stable countries. The leading foreign supplier is Canada. Middle Eastern nations account for just three of the top 10 exporters to the U.S., and they account for around 10 percent of U.S. oil needs.

Russia's Lukoil launched this oil field in western Siberia on Oct. 8. Russia is heavily dependent on its oil exports and is now facing financial problems as world oil prices drop sharply. The country is also facing Western economic sanctions. Olesya Astakhova /Reuters/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Olesya Astakhova /Reuters/Landov

Russia And Iran: From the U.S. perspective, one of the benefits of falling oil prices is the pressure they place on Russia and Iran. Both countries are heavily dependent on oil exports at high prices. They face the double whammy of Western sanctions that are also biting.

Russia needs an oil price of $100 a barrel and Iran needs around $130 a barrel to balance their budgets, according to The Economist.

The financial hurt these countries are facing could have political implications.

Russia is at odds with the West over its annexation of Crimea and its ongoing role in Ukraine's turmoil. Russian President Vladimir Putin has consistently opted for confrontation, but the price for that position is getting steeper. Putin pushed back against a request for higher government spending this week, citing reduced government revenue from energy production.

"You know that energy prices have fallen as well as for some of our other traditional products," Putin said. "Due to that, would we not, on the contrary, reconsider the budget toward reducing some spending?"

Iran, meanwhile, is negotiating on its nuclear program with the international community and is also waging a proxy war with Saudi Arabia for power and influence throughout the Middle East.

This is one likely reason the Saudis have been willing to pump oil at high levels even though that's contributing to low prices. The Saudis publicly cite a business motive, saying they want to maintain their current share of the oil market. But the Saudis are also well aware that low prices mean less money for archrival Iran.

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Oil wells near McKittrick, Calif., one of the places where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is on the rise. The U.S. became the world's largest oil producer this year, surpassing Saudi Arabia and pumping some 11 million barrels a day. David McNew/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption David McNew/Getty Images

Oil wells near McKittrick, Calif., one of the places where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is on the rise. The U.S. became the world's largest oil producer this year, surpassing Saudi Arabia and pumping some 11 million barrels a day.

David McNew/Getty Images

U.S. Production: Despite soft demand, U.S. oil production is rising again this year due primarily to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The U.S., which became the world's largest natural gas producer in 2010, is now the world's largest oil producer this year, surpassing Saudi Arabia this year and pumping around 11 million barrels a day.

The average U.S. gas price is $3.17 a gallon this week, down around 15 percent since June, according to GasBuddy.com. The lower price at the pump effectively serves as a stimulus for consumers that can encourage increased spending to stimulate the economy.

"It's quite possible that Christmas shopping will be much better this year because consumers will be spending less for gasoline," economist Philip Verleger told NPR's Morning Edition.

While lower energy prices benefit most of the country, they could deliver a blow to oil-producing states like Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota. If prices go down and stay down for an extended period, energy companies could cut back on production and investment.

Related NPR Stories

Energy

'A Global Bathtub': Rethinking The U.S. Oil Export Ban

Parallels

The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo: The Old Rules No Longer Apply

The Global Economy: Lower gas prices are a small consolation if accompanied by a sluggish world economy, and that's what many economists are forecasting. In Europe and Asia, most of the major economies have low or slow growth compared with recent years.

China and India, which were gulping down imported oil as their economies raced ahead, have both seen slowdowns. The lower oil prices will help keep their manufacturing and transportation costs down, but that alone is not enough if the rest of the world is less interested in buying their exports.

Of course, oil prices could reverse direction swiftly and dramatically, as they have many times in the past. Small shifts in world oil production, currently around 92 million barrels a day, often lead to major swings in prices. If, for example, Saudi Arabia chose to cut production, or the fighting in Iraq shut down its oil fields, prices could head north in a hurry, according to analysts.

Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR.org. You can follow him @gregmyre1.

oil prices

"Most of the young people that go to college go away, and then they don't come back," says Lee Bianchi, a retired engineer who lived in Clinton, Iowa (pop. 26,647), from 1961 to 2008.

That's long been the storyline in small-town America, which for decades has bled citizens — especially young ones — to the glamorous big cities. One might have thought technology would stanch the flow, at least among millennials: With Wi-Fi and telecommuting, young people theoretically could dodge overpriced real estate and ugly commutes and opt instead for a spacious house with a big yard and a broadband connection.

But it turns out the millennial generation is only accelerating the demographic shift. In fact, this may be the most "bright lights, big city" generation in history. While the number of millennials is ticking slightly upward in small towns and rural areas, it's nothing compared with the growth of their numbers in suburbs and cities.

"At this point, the prognosis does not look good for much of small-town America," writes William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

The kids aren't just flocking to the city proper, either, but to the metropolis writ large, including the fancier suburbs. The top destination for millennials is the Washington, D.C., suburb of Arlington, Va., where their ranks grew by a staggering 82 percent between 2007 and 2013. Arlington's median home sale price is $557,250, and of the 290 Arlington apartments listed on Zillow, only 10 would let you live alone for less than $1,200 a month.

An enterprising millennial with a flexible employer might hop across the Chesapeake Bay to the historic district of Cambridge, Md., (pop. 12,690) with a porch overlooking the Choptank River. With a thriving downtown and arts district, Cambridge was No. 10 on Livability's list of Best Small Towns in 2013. Homes go for $164,154, and a monthly $1,200 rental will get you a detached house or a 1,600-square-foot townhouse.

But affordable real estate and waterfront views don't have millennials biting. They continue "a multigenerational pattern of young adults preferring more expensive urban areas over lower-cost rural ones because the lifestyles and opportunities in such places make the extra burden of cost worth it," says Robert Lang, professor of urban growth and population dynamics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Which is to say: Getting to a big city — or at least near one — still has the smell of success.

"We don't all hail from small Midwestern towns, but most came from places where they felt limited — small-town Maine, suburban west Texas, California's Central Valley and the Inland Empire," wrote twentysomething Brittany Shoot of her friends and neighbors in the San Francisco Bay Area. "It's easy to find people who will sneeringly complain about how trapped they felt as teenagers."

Small towns will have to hustle to recruit and retain millennials, experts say. The American Planning Association urges local planners to mimic the appeal of city centers by creating "density." That means keeping the walkable neighborhoods and traditional town centers that millennials say is key to making a community a desirable place to live.

Smart-growth advocate James A. Bacon sees opportunities to fight off "brain drain" and attract urban "escapees" who start small businesses, but he worries that towns aren't taking advantage. "Unfortunately, to date, local economic developers have stuck with the industrial-recruitment strategy that bears less and less fruit," Bacon writes.

But without economic opportunity — that is, good jobs — the most charming downtown in the world can't attract permanent residents. Small towns may have to reinvent themselves, according to experts like Frey of the Brookings Institution.

But all is not lost. The numbers that point toward the decline of small towns also show a positive narrative for millennials, and perhaps a sunnier economic outlook than you'd expect. Notwithstanding student-loan debt and the stereotype of living in their parents' basements, a RealtyTrac analysis released in September showed that this generation is moving where the rents and mortgages are high. Arlington is just the tip of it.

From 2007 to 2013, the 10 counties that gained the most millennial residents had a median home price of $406,800. And the average population of those counties was 587,522 — a far cry from small-town living. Baby boomers filled out the other side of the equation by downsizing to counties with average populations of 261,232 and a median home price of $144,875.

So the best answer as to why millennials are moving away from smaller towns may be simple: because they can. And small towns will have to rev up their sales pitch to convince young adults that they can live not just cheaply but also well in the places that older generations called home.

migration

Millennials

rural America

Urban demographics

What's most amazing about this point in the TV season, is what hasn't happened yet.

One month into the new season, no new fall TV show has yet been canceled.

(By this point last year, several shows had already been put out of our misery, including ABC's Lucky 7 and NBC's Ironside remake.)

Still, despite programmers' patience this year, there's still lots of clues about what's working this TV season and what isn't. Here's a peek at what we know so far about the current TV season.

Monkey See

Deggans Picks 'Gotham,' 'Black-ish,' 'The Flash' Among Fall TV's Best

Timeslots still matter. Some of the worst-reviewed new fall shows have shown a surprising level of viewership, probably because of when they air.

Much as critics hated NBC's Mysteries of Laura or CBS shows like NCIS: New Orleans, Scorpion and Stalker, all of these programs have had strong-to-good debut ratings. NCIS: NO airs after NCIS, one of TV's highest-rated dramas. Scorpion airs on Mondays after CBS' giant hit The Big Bang Theory, while both Stalker and Laura fit into cop-centered nights of programming on Wednesday that keep fans watching.

Certainly, some people are using technology to watch shows when they want. But it seems there's still value in airing near another popular show or on a popular night of programming when fans can just avoid changing the channel.

Television

Competition Highlights Importance Of Fall TV Season

Diversity can draw audiences. ABC's sitcom about a upper middle class black family Black-ish, may have fallen a bit from its debut levels. But it is still holding a lot of the audience who shows up for the program which airs before it, the hit Modern Family, and got a full season order (most new network TV shows are only picked up for 13 episodes at first, and given the "back nine" episodes for a full season later). Jane the Virgin, an Americanized version of a telenovela centered on a Latino family, got the best Monday night ratings for The CW in two years last week.

And How to Get Away With Murder, just the second network TV show to feature a black woman as the sole star in 40 years, also got a full season order. It's doing well airing behind the first network TV drama to star a black woman since the 1970s, Scandal.

Television

CBS's Thursday Night Football: An Ambitious Alliance With A Lot At Stake

Football is can't-miss TV. Media watchers waited to see if the NFL's off-the-field problems addressing domestic abuse charges from some of its players would affect ratings for CBS' Thursday Night Football games. But CBS says its games so far are drawing viewership 36 percent higher than last year's scripted programming, drawing an average 16 million viewers a week.

TV audiences may hate rom coms as much as movie audiences. Several romantic comedies are struggling for audiences, including ABC's Selfie and Manhattan Love Story and NBC's A to Z (the network's other romantic comedy, the better-reviewed Marry Me, debuted to stronger numbers last week). This could be a quality issue, as the shows which are struggling also got pointedly mixed reviews before they started.

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Comedian John Mulaney, center, stars with, from left, Zack Pearlman, Nasim Pedrad, Seaton Smith, Martin Short and Elliott Gould on the Fox sitcom Mulaney. Joe Viles/Fox broadcasting hide caption

itoggle caption Joe Viles/Fox broadcasting

Comedian John Mulaney, center, stars with, from left, Zack Pearlman, Nasim Pedrad, Seaton Smith, Martin Short and Elliott Gould on the Fox sitcom Mulaney.

Joe Viles/Fox broadcasting

Fox is having a rough fall season, outside of Gotham City. The network's grand new experiment in reality TV, Utopia, was supposed to spend a year documenting a group of people building a new society. But instead its low ratings have forced a move to Fridays and rumors it may be the first new show this fall to get cancelled.

Widely-admired standup comic and Saturday Night Live writer John Mulaney saw his sitcom Mulaney debut to a torrent of harsh reviews and some of the worst new ratings of the season. And shows such as the hospital drama Red Band Society and the Broadchruch remake Gracepoint have also struggled for viewership.

Only the Batman-centered drama Gotham has found its footing so far, earning good reviews, strong ratings and a full season pickup.

Maybe it's time for Fox executives to fire up the Bat-signal and get some help for the rest of their fall schedule.