You go into some places, look around, and figure there's gotta be a story behind this place.

Walk into the Commodore Cafe on Perrysville Avenue and you figure there must be 8,000 stories. The proprietor, Mr. Bill, doesn't disappoint.

I drove up the North Side thoroughfare yesterday morning because I'd heard the owner, Bill Schmidt, had this dream of a mural of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry on the southern side of his building, facing the high school that bears his surname.

Never mind that there's already a fine mural with Perry's image -- already affectionately known by some as "Blue Elvis" -- just up the road on the side of a convenience store at the corner of Vinceton.

That mural had originally been intended to go on Mr. Schmidt's wall, but the mural committee and he went in different directions. So now the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie is facing away from the school (looking as if he's carrying an air conditioner into battle).

I knew from a cafe patron that its owner -- who also owns Mr. Bill's Tap and Grill next door -- was ready to regale anyone with his plan to inspire modern students by putting a genuine 19th-century American hero in their sights. But I wasn't quite prepared for all the salt and pepper shakers.

Mr. Bill was outside with heavy machinery to replace his sidewalk when I introduced myself yesterday. He hadn't opened for breakfast, but he immediately unlocked the door, made a pot of coffee and began his "tableside show-and-tell."

He'll tell you the difference between a pack rat and a collector is unpacking. It's all in the presentation. Ceramic salt and pepper shakers, license plates and beer trays line one wall. Another wall has portraits of The Three Stooges. And scattered about are ancient scuba gear, an expandable flapjack flipper and an antique soap dispenser from that prototypical indoor mall, the Jenkins Arcade.

Somehow it all works. Because the guy showing you, say, the mousetrap that seats four "meese" is having so much fun sharing his stories.

"Come on, can you have fun with stuff like this?" he asks, showing me a homemade watering can he picked up somewhere sometime, and imagining the handyman who made it for his wife just so she'd have the prettiest one on the block.

When it comes to Commodore Perry, though, he's dead serious. As a teenager at North Hills High in the late 1970s, he was mostly interested in dirt bikes and football, but he grew into this passion for history.

So when students at Pittsburgh Perry High School slip into his place thinking they're going to slip out of education, he slaps a little history on them. He is most interested in letting them know why the school calls its teams the Commodores.

"The institution itself doesn't reinforce awareness of what the mascot stands for. They think he's Cap'n Crunch."

Teachers, hold your calls. I'm confident students would know Commodore Perry from Cap'n Crunch in a naval officers' lineup. The school Web site has a nice short bio on its namesake. But Mr. Bill's hyperbole is backed up with a genuine awe of the man who assured American control of the big lake up north.

In the summer of 1813, a 27-year-old Perry supervised the building of a small fleet. That September, off the coast of Ohio, he fought the British aboard the USS Lawrence until his brig was reduced to a wreck. With most of his crew dead or wounded and his last gun destroyed, Perry took down his personal pennant with "Don't Give Up the Ship." Those were the last reported words of his friend, Capt. James Lawrence, who'd died in battle only two months before (and for whom Lawrenceville is named).

Perry had himself rowed a half-mile through gunfire to the Niagara, and there he carried the day with brave sailors, black and white. He'd send a back-of-an-envelope note to Gen. William Henry Harrison with the now famous words, "We have met the enemy and they are ours."

Perry was, says Bill Schmidt, "a person with tenacity. A person with stick-to-itiveness. A person who ain't gonna quit."

Perseverance is a quality of enduring worth. And any student standing on the grand front steps of Perry High would be able to see the mural that, for now, only Mr. Bill can see in his mind's eye. From the school, "my building is like a chalkboard. You can't miss it."

The 200th anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie isn't until Sept. 10, 2013, so it's not as if he's short on time. He hasn't even chosen an artist. But here's hoping he finds one worthy of the assignment.