HERMAN HARRISON: Oh, I guess they were the best days of my life.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: And Herman Harrison has seen many days, 95 years of them.

He grew up in the same house where his mother was born in 1889.

HERMAN HARRISON: It was an old log house with chickens in it and you could see out between the chickens and see the stars at night.

Come a snow, you have snow laying on, blowing in on your bed.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Even after all these years, Herman still remembers his first day of school.

HERMAN HARRISON: My mother had an old wood cook stove and she always put the door down, let it cool out after cooking, and I backed up against that door.

I went to school with bandages around both knees.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: And it was a long walk to school for a child.

HERMAN HARRISON: Yeah, I walked a half-a-mile.

The old road didn't have no gravel on it then.

It was mighty muddy in places.

The winters were worse than they are now.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Herman attended Pleasant Hill School, a one room schoolhouse in the Snow Creek District of Franklin County.

He says he was a mischievous student, but excelled in his lessons.

HERMAN HARRISON: My mother was a school teacher and she had taught me pretty well my ABCs and arithmetic when I went to school.

I never had no trouble learning.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: He did so well, his teachers encouraged him to continue on to high school and then to college.

HERMAN HARRISON: Back in those days, we didn't have no money to pay for college.

I had two of my high school teachers wanted me to go to college, but I didn't make it.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Herman made it further than most in Franklin County back then.

Benny Gibson, a former Franklin County educator who regularly checks in on Herman says students often left school after seventh grade.

BENNY GIBSON: Well over 50%, closer to 75% of students would drop out of school at that time because they were 12, 13, 14 years old, whatever, and they were needed on the farm.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Benny has been researching the area's history of one room schools.

He says some students who did well continued their schooling.

BENNY GIBSON: A few of the students wanted more and they would have to travel a little bit farther to one of the schools that offered high school courses.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Herman used his smarts to become a carpenter.

He never married and still lives in the same house where his mother was born.

But he's happy to call Franklin County Home.

HERMAN HARRISON: I haven't seen anywhere else yet that I'd rather be than here.