A friendly neighborhood of mostly retired folks is empty today, and that in itself is a tragedy.

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But what has replaced the evening walkers and front-yard gardeners is almost too much to bear: The beautiful, looming oak trees for which the mobile home park is named now loom in dead silence.

Valley Oaks is a ghost town, a wasteland, a graveyard.

On Tuesday, I walked through the park, where I lived for two years, trying to grasp the fact that so much of it was gone, either carried off by the wind or collapsed into foot-deep piles of fluff representing memories and investments.

It was the feeling of the familiar being wrenched from my hands -- a feeling that hundreds of others in Fallbrook, and thousands across Southern California, are experiencing.

This reporter understands your pain.

While most of the southern half of Valley Oaks was saved, dozens upon dozens of mobile homes in the northwest corner of the park were flattened by the Rice fire on Monday afternoon, including those belonging to my parents and grandparents.

Firefighters say the blaze doubled back on itself in various locations, burning homes they thought they had already saved.

They say mobile homes are the quickest to burn -- like balsa wood.

They say Valley Oaks will probably be the biggest collective tragedy of the Rice fire, and I am inclined to believe that, given that at least 50 or 60 homes were destroyed in the space of three average lots elsewhere in Fallbrook.

Some young families inhabited the park, such as the young husband who returned to his charred home with shocked outrage as I and several other journalists watched Tuesday afternoon.

But most of the folks who lived -- and will continue living -- at Valley Oaks are retired, collecting Social Security.

These are the ones you would see every day at the clubhouse, decked out in trunks or one-piece bathing suits for their daily dip in the hot tub.

Or the ones you would see out walking small, noisy dogs.

You could set your watch by them.

I tried to describe my mother to a 78-year-old gentleman whose home barely escaped the blaze.

I remembered that he was the man who would always stare as I drove past his coach and would not return my waves, nor my smiles.

I asked him, you remember her, right?

I told him that my mother always used to walk around the park, and he just scratched his head.

I did not see him approach a few minutes later, when I was standing ankle-deep in the remains of my parents' home, picking up things I recognized and sobbing.

"Your mum, she drive purple car?" he asked in a thick Slavic accent.

I nodded.

"I think I know her now. I'm sorry."

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.