Ovando property sale takes Flys to someplace familiar

Howie and Peggy Fly’s sale of their buildings in downtown Ovando has meant a move for them, but they haven’t gone far.

The home they had been living in - the old Boyd Ranch house that was moved to Ovando in 1968 - was part of the sale, which prompted them to find a new home. Or in this case an old one.

“So, we bought this house, and it’s got just as much work that needs to be done,” Howie said.

Their new home on the west edge of the town began its life as the school house at Browns Lake.

“There were ranches and homesteaders all over the valley,” Howie said. “They’d have six or eight kids. I went to one of them, Salem Creek School, there were six of us.”

By the 1930s the school had fallen out of use and was pulled to Ovando by a team of horses.

The house, which was extensively modified and expanded by former owner Tom Black prior to his death in 2018, was one Howie and Peggie actually knew well. It had been their family home until about 1984.

“The girls grew up here,” Peggy said. “It was quite bit smaller.”

Howie noted that some of the changes reflected Tom Black’s 6-foot, 11-inch height. A former basketball player, Black had installed bathroom cabinets many people would need a ladder to reach, a matchbox for the fireplace mounted nearly six feet off the ground and a workbench in the garage that’s about chest high on Howie.

Not everything had changed, however. Howie pointed to a small opening on one wall of the upstairs loft in the original part of the house. Despite the remodeling over the years, a playhouse he’d built for his daughters along a wall in the upstairs room had survived.