Years ago, I attended a special preview of the long, unspooled typescript of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” at what was then the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Irsay had bought the treasure for $2.43 million and was about to send it around the country for a series of exhibitions.
This was well before the 2014 incident when he was pulled over with enough pills in his possession to start his own pharmacy.
But there were already stories about his ongoing war with substance abuse. Some of them were public. Some were merely rumors.
When he made brief remarks at the “On the Road” preview, Irsay alluded, jocularly, to those stories. The Chicago Tribune had published a revealing profile of him not long before with a photo of him sitting near the long typescript while holding one of Elvis Presley’s guitars … and a lit cigarette.
Irsay assured everyone, with a rueful little laugh, that the lit cigarette never had been anywhere near Kerouac’s masterwork.
The crowd chuckled along with him.
At the event, I chatted with Irsay for a few minutes about Kerouac and “On the Road.” I’d done part of my honors thesis in college on the book and then developed and taught a class on the Beats when I was in graduate school.
I was surprised to discover that the typescript wasn’t just a trophy for Irsay. A few minutes of conversation established that he knew the book and that it meant something to him.
At the time, that surprised me.
How could a tale about mid-20th-century bohemians searching for meaning speak that way to a son of privilege?
The Beats struggled to scrounge up gas money to travel from one town to the next. Irsay managed $100 million transactions as if he were dealing with Monopoly money.
The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense.
“On the Road” tells the story of lost souls searching for their angels and struggling with their demons while the road—a metaphor for life itself—stretches out behind them and spools out before them. It’s about trying to find a place of balance and peace in a world and an existence that tips, tilts, and turns all the time.
That would have spoken to Irsay, whose battles with addiction rarely if ever allowed him to find that center.
Or know that peace.
I encountered Irsay a few other times.
For a while, we did our workouts at the same place, a club on the far north side of Indianapolis a former Colts player had opened. He had a reserved locker there—locker number one, with his name engraved on it—and would come in to lift, stretch and maybe do a little cardio.
We’d run into each other in the locker room or around the water fountain and chat for a bit.
Irsay was always personable. We didn’t talk about anything of great consequence.
Mostly, as I recall, we complained about the challenges of trying to stay in some kind of shape as we grew older and how things hurt a lot more if we pushed the envelope too hard.
I’m pretty sure that, during those quick conversations, he didn’t know me from Adam.
But he chose to be decent and interact as if we were just two guys trying to push back the ravages of time. He had to be aware that I knew who he was—his name was emblazoned on his locker, for goodness’ sake—but he never seemed to want to pull rank or stand on ceremony.
That’s why I never could work up feelings other than empathy when he slipped.
I’ve known other people—some close to me—who have battled addiction. I know it’s a great leveler, a curse that afflicts the famous and the forgotten alike.
Most of all, I know that those who war with addiction find peace hard to come by.
Jim Irsay died the other day. He was 65.
In the hours after I learned of his passing, I thought of that conversation at the art museum and his obvious feeling for “On the Road.”
And I find myself hoping that, in the end, he found his angel and put his demons to bed.
May he rest in peace.
