I love them as well. My daughter used to keep a pet rough green snake coiled around her pigtail while doing her home school work.
In the 1980s-90s, I'd catch wild snakes during my hikes and bring them home for the kids to keep for a few weeks, then set them free where I found them.
Some snakes, though, stayed most of the summer and my son had one especially loving eastern king snake for two years.
Rough green snakes, black rat snakes, eastern king snakes, and eastern hog-nosed snakes were their favorites, and are calm, friendly species. We'd feed most of them white mice.