During summer trips back to Oklahoma on the old Route 66 highway, he enjoyed watching for unusual sights along the way. He stated, "I think that's where my bizarre sense of design comes from. Once you've seen a 100-foot cement buffalo on top of a doughnut stand in the middle of nowhere, you're never the same."
Smith's artistic talent became evident during his years in grade school and junior high school. He made the wry comment in Talking with Artists that his future career was determined by his lack of mathematical ability: "I guess I really knew I wanted to be an artist when my fourth-grade math test came back with a big 'D' on it." While Smith spent his time drawing and writing stories, he also read extensively. As he recalled in Talking with Artists, "I think one of my fondest memories is of lying stretched out on the library floor at Parkridge Elementary, reading Eleanor Cannon's Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. I loved the story and the art. To this day, whenever I smell hard-boiled eggs I think of how Chuck and David saved the planet with the sulfur-smelling eggs.
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