Strawberry Girl

Mr. Slater is Birdie’s neighbor and a notorious alcoholic who terrorizes people in the community. Mr. Slater isolates himself from his neighbors and raises his two eldest sons to be disrespectful to others. Mr. Slater doesn’t believe in the value of educating his children or learning how to properly farm his land or take care of his animals. Mr. Slater’s ignorance about farm life is made more personal by the fact that he and his ancestors are from Florida. He is a squatter who claims he inherited his land and cattle from his family, who were also squatters. Mr. Slater has an entitlement complex about his land and is against the Boyers because he’s been around longer and feels belittled by the Boyers’ success. Mr. Slater claims that Mr. Boyer has “no tight to cut off my right o’ way! […] We’ve always lived there, me and my Pa and my Grandpa before me! […] We’ve always had the use of all that land for pasture, for moss pickin’ and frog huntin’ and anything else we want. You got no right to fence it up!” (96). At its core, the feud between Mr.