Smith's parents, who didn't get along, lived in separate houses, meeting only at dinner time. Although poor, they gave their son an artistic education, including 10 years of drawing and painting lessons. For a time, it is said, they even ran an art school in their house. Smith was also a voracious reader and he recalled his father bringing him a copy of Carl Sandburg's folksong anthology, "American Songbag". "We were considered some kind of 'low' family", Smith once said, "despite my mother's feeling that she was incarnation of the Czarina of Russia". Friends recall that in high school Smith carried around a camera and in his high school yearbook said that he wanted to compose symphonic music.