Aunt Sis was named after her mother, Rosina Kernen. She grew up with her three brothers in the Kernen Tavern when it was located on Louisville, Kentucky’s Preston Street near Clarks Lane
In later years she painted China to give as treasured gifts to family members.
I always admired her because I enjoyed making artworks and she encouraged my first attempts. And then too, I enjoyed seeing cowboy movies and I had heard that when she didn’t want to go to school, she would go off and ride her horse. That probably didn’t happen very often, but it was an interesting story.
We did not own a horse and in my day, I would never have been able to skip school what with my mother waving me out the door five days a week and Holy Family Sisters of Charity welcoming me to a desk on Poplar Level Road.
But Aunt Sis’s mother died when she was young and I am sure Mr. Kernen had a hard time keeping up with his headstrong daughter.
I once asked my father why Aunt Sis never married. He thought for a moment and then said, “Aunt Sis drank whiskey.”
It seemed that she loved a young man whose family disapproved of her and her Tavern upbringing. He married someone else and she never got over him.
In my grade school days, she owned a horse named, “Fanny” and stabled her on the same farm where Pee Wee King stabled his. Pee Wee’s group of singing cowboys were stars around Louisville. Aunt Sis always had tickets to his shows and took us Kernen girls to hear them play.
We were also happy visitors as her guests to the annual World Championship Horse Show held at the State Fairgrounds during the Kentucky State Fair. Aunt Sis and her brothers were avid horse fans and appreciated following them at a racetrack or show ring.
Aunt Sis enjoyed taking photos and started me on a lifetime habit of doing the same when she gave me a Brownie Box camera for my 8th-grade graduation.
My dark chocolate addiction began when for Easter one year she appeared with a bittersweet chocolate Bunny. I had never tasted bittersweet chocolate having been reared in a milk chocolate family. I promptly switched allegiances when I discovered the marvelous flavor.
When he became a bedridden arthritic, Aunt Sis and Uncle Frank cared for their father in a house on Fleet Street behind the Kernen Grocery near where the Tavern stood. He passed away at age 65 in 1931.
After the Kernen Grocery was sold, Aunt Sis worked for a short time at a manufacturing company that created, among other items, coasters made with small mirror tiles that were adhered to a felt backing.
The coasters fascinated me as did her rented shotgun house on Shelby Street. It had a side wrought iron gate and was near a Heitzman Bakery. In later years when I renovated the little red brick cottage across from The Cloister on downtown Chestnut Street, I felt comfortable because it reminded me of walking through the iron gate where I once visited Aunt Sis, and to make days better, it was very near Shelby Street only much farther north.
Aunt Sis shared her Shelby Street house with Aunt Dolores. Dolores was not our real Aunt, but she claimed us and we dearly loved her. She married Louis Clavin and of course, he was drawn into our circle as Uncle Louie. They had no children and they followed the family tradition of sharing the affections of the Kernen youngsters.
Uncle Louie was stationed at a northern base during the Second World War. They came to Louisville for a Christmas visit after we moved from the bungalow near the Poplar Level Road Grocery Store. They looked in the small door window and saw my China doll standing near the Christmas tree and knew they had found the right house on McKay Street.
After several years of marriage, the two were divorced and Aunt Dolores spent her winters in Florida as a telephone operator. She would stay with the Kernens on McKay Street during summer months when she passed through town on her way south.
She enjoyed helping to keep the kitchen tidy and was known to snatch a coffee cup out of someone’s hand when the drinker had barely finished the last sip.
Aunt Dolores served as an eager babysitter when Duion was about three months old. I had driven Nana K. for a Doctor’s visit which took longer than expected and Duion woke from his morning nap before we returned to McKay Street.
When we stepped onto the back porch we could hear her singing to her small charge. We were not prepared for the humorous sight of the two of them sitting at the dining room table. She was bouncing him on her knee and feeding him lumpy pablum. He was smiling up at her with great admiration.
There he was, adoringly looking up at her in a brand new little Carter knit infant dress that I had received at a baby shower before he was born. I had tucked it into the bedroom chest of drawers along with other girl items when he entered our Kentucky lives as a sweet baby boy.
“I knew where the diapers were but I did not see his clothes. I found this little dress to put on him,” she told us.
I smile when I remember how proud she was to have been asked to babysit. The lumpy pablum was adjusted to a smooth texture and the little Carter knit dress was returned to the dresser drawer to wait for Geralyn’s arrival into the family.
Aunt Dolores hugged me with tears in her eyes when I asked her to be Geralyn’s Godmother. At last, she had a very legal daughter.
Aunt Sis moved in with the Hans Family to be near her A&P worksite. Nana K. and Mary Catherine Hoagland Hans grew up as best friends all through childhood, so the families were happy to have her in a home familiar to all of us. They enjoyed card playing and fishing at their cabin on Rough River. Nana K. named her baby sister after Mary Catherine Hans.
Mary and Rosina became sisters with Mary Catherine gaining the Aunt title without having to birth us Kernens and Aunt Sis gaining a sister that she needed.
Aunt Sis was a dog lover and when my beloved Skippy was killed while chasing a car she brought Rusty as a replacement.