"On Saturday evening hundreds of people will shift into the going-out mode. Car keys will be frantically searched for, permanent waves patted into place and 'hurry up, we'll be late' shouted. Time and again, wallets, purses and pockets will be checked and rechecked to ensure they contain prized tickets.

Those tickets are for two live performances of 'A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor' at 6 and 9:30 this Saturday evening at the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center. When they went on sale a few months ago, the tickets were snapped up faster than 'my, they're tasty' Powder Milk biscuits hot from the oven.

On the way to the soldout shows many ticketholders will likely wonder what they'll see and hear. The cast on the show will probably be wondering the same thing.

If the past is any indication, the show's host will still be fine-tuning scripts even as the audience is filing into the theater. Keillor has been known to work on improving his show even as it's being performed.

'Some shows you kind of feel you have the handle on it the day before,' Keillor said via telephone from his St. Paul, Minn., office. 'Others are really a mystery, right up until the time we go on the air.

'I'm in a kind of steady state of medium excitation. I don't perspire big beads of sweat. I don't shake.

'My heart does not pound. But if someone dropped an anvil on the stage, I would probably jump six feet into the air.'

On Saturday evenings nearly 4 million people tune their radios to one of more than 500 Public Radio stations across the nation to listen to live broadcasts of Keillor's show. The homey program comes across as a seamless, glitch-free block of entertainment that includes music, comedy and just gabbing.

What many listeners probably never suspect is that the performers are on a sort of thrill ride with Keillor doing some pretty fancy seat-of-the-pants navigating. With the dark specter of disaster just a hiccup away, it's the kind of job that can put pressure-sensitive people face down on the floor.

But for radio pros such as show regular Tim Russell, working without a net on live radio is about as good as it gets. He has been doing all the character voices and impersonations on 'A Prairie Home Companion' for the last decade.

'One of the things that's fun about the show is you never know what you're going to get until hopefully the day before--sometimes the day of the show,' said Russell, who during the week works as the entertainment editor for radio station WCCO-AM 830 in Minneapolis.

'What happens is we try to gather on Friday for a read-through of some of the scripts Garrison has written. He likes to hear what they sound like and if they're going to work.

'If we can do that, he then rewrites everything so we usually see an all new batch of scripts on Saturday right before the show. Then about 10 minutes before the show starts, Garrison works up a lineup on how everything is going to fall together.'

One might think this waltz along the cliff's edge is a formula for disaster. It might be, too, if it wasn't for the fact that Keillor's lead is sure and steady.

Not only does the Minnesota native have the steely nerves of a riverboat captain, he instills confidence in those around him. His on-stage partners have seen him guide them safely by so many rocky, on-air shoals that they don't even raise an eyebrow when disaster looms large.

'Disaster is often just a moment away, but it's never happened in the 10 years I've been on the program,' Russell said. 'On occasions I've seen Garrison actually edit scripts on the fly.

'He'll literally walk behind us and X out paragraphs as we're reading. But he's such a good editor, and we've done it for so many years, it's not a big deal.

'What makes him such a genius in my mind is his programming ability. I'm always stunned by how he times everything out, and moves things around thematically, even as the program is going on.'

Keillor might have learned something about grace and movement by watching the Mississippi River when he was a kid. He spent many hours sitting on the river bank near his home dreaming about one day traveling down it on a raft.

Keillor was born on Aug. 7, 1942, just up river from Minneapolis in Anoka. He became interested in radio while attending the University of Minnesota and, in 1969, went to work for Minnesota Public Radio.

Keillor worked on an early morning program called 'A Prairie Home Companion,' which took its name from the Prairie Home cemetery in Moorhead, Minn. He got the idea of turning the morning program into a live variety show while researching an article he was writing for the New Yorker magazine about the Grand Ole Opry.

The talented young writer began what-ifing. What if he had a radio program with musical guests and commercials for imaginary products? What if it would be broadcast live, like in the early days of radio?

The musings resulted in radio history. Keillor hosted the first live broadcast of 'A Prairie Home Companion' on July 6, 1974.

The venue was the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College in St. Paul. The show's producer, Margaret Moos, sold tickets to the now historic event.

The price was $1 for adults and 50 cents for children. The total gate came to a staggering $8. Only 12 people attended the inaugural program, but Keillor was proud of what had been accomplished.

'It was quite an achievement for our little public radio station to do this,' Keillor said. 'To put on a live broadcast with a number of different musical acts that was unrehearsed.

'It was really quite a technical challenge, and I was quite amazed that they were able to do it. So I felt a real sense of accomplishment, which I have not felt much of ever since.

'No microphone fell over on the show. Nobody dashed up out of the audience and started screaming political invective into a live microphone. Nobody stood up on stage, wept, broke down and started talking about their own inadequacies.'

Today, millions of people turn their backs on the television for two hours Saturday evening to listen to what Keillor and his crew will come up with. Many listeners tune in to find out about the latest goings-on in the mythical town called Lake Wobegon.

Although you can't find such a place on a Minnesota road map, its creator has described it with such clarity that countless listeners have built a vivid picture of the town in their minds. In the second hour of the broadcast, Keillor spends 15 minutes or so telling listeners about what occurred the previous week in the town bearing the name of an Ojibwa Indian word he says means 'the place where we waited all day for you in the rain.'

'I think the big attraction of the program is the news from Lake Wobegon,' Russell said. 'That's the centerpiece of the show, and I'm convinced that it has universal appeal.

'There's something about families and small town living that makes everybody relate to it. I'm not sure why, but in New York City it's just as big as if we play a smaller town like St. Cloud [Minn.], as we did last year.

'People relate to the dynamics of what goes on in Lake Wobegon.'

Although Lake Wobegon is a figment of Keillor's imagination, he bases many of the characters and places on reality. And if the town 'where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all the children are above average,' existed, it would be found within the borders of Stearns County, Minn.

'A few years ago Garrison wrote the text for an article in National Geographic called `In Search of Lake Wobegon,' '

Russell said. 'He talks about all the towns around St. Cloud in Stearns County like Freeport.

'And there's a place called Charlie's Cafe, which is in effect the Chatterbox Cafe which is often mentioned [during the Lake Wobegon monologue]. When we performed in St. Cloud, my wife and I drove around to all these little towns surrounding it.

'It was really fun to see all the places that formed the whole basis for the show.'

Russell said one of the nice things about working on the program is getting to visit different places when the show goes on the road. He said about 55 percent of the shows are performed for audiences in venues other than the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, which is the home stage.

The man who has mimicked people from Julia Child to Arnold Schwarzenegger said the road trips have a lot to do with Keillor's love for visiting new places and meeting people. He said his boss and the cast also enjoy the energy that radiates from an audience that has never seen the show performed live.

'Many of the road shows are done in places we've never performed before,' Russell said. 'So the response is considerably greater than what you would have in the Twin Cities, where people have become accustomed to having it there.

'After the show, Garrison always goes out into the audience and, more times than not, he's there for up to two hours until the last person has left. He never leaves until everybody who wanted to talk to him or sign something or whatever has had an opportunity.

'That kind of belies his shy image. He's very good with meeting people who have taken the effort to come and see the show.'

There are a lot of folks from the area who are eager to meet the sage of Lake Wobegon. The event is sponsored by WVTF National Public Radio in Roanoke with underwriting support from the City of Charlottesville and So Very Virginia.com -- Charlottesville's Visitor Resource.

Glenn Gleixner, general manager of WVTF, said the station has been trying to get Keillor to Charlottesville for a number of years.

'Our audience has an amazing emotional attachment to `Prairie Home,'' Gleixner said.

'It's richly entertaining and always full of laughs and surprises.

'I'm delighted that fans throughout the region will be able to enjoy a live performance. I think the public radio audience likes entertainment that makes them think a little bit, and `Prairie Home' does that quite well.

'It also has a very relaxed and laconic style that fits well with what they enjoy. And Garrison is one of a kind and really a national treasure. It seems like everybody loves him -- like everybody is his friend.'

The 6 p.m. show Saturday will be broadcast live, and the 9:30 show will be recorded for a delayed broadcast. Although Keillor will likely be working on scripts right up to air time, he does know who his musical guests will be.

The Minnesotan's long-time friends and Augusta County residents, Linda and Robin Williams, will perform. A string band called Mountain Heart also will entertain as will folk singer Mike Seeger.

As far as what else will transpire, folks will just have to wait until Saturday evening. One certainty is that the set will look almost exactly as it does when the show is performed at the Fitzgerald Theater.

'When we're doing a show on the road, if I didn't blink twice I would think I was still in St. Paul,' Russell said. 'There's a farm house that's constructed in the back of the set and the banners are all there for the Ketchup Advisory Board and Powder Milk biscuits.

'There's a truck that brings all the equipment, so there's very few changes. Right before the curtain goes up, we'll all be very interested in seeing what the lineup will be.

'We're not there when they rehearse the various musical aspects of the show, which is a great portion of it. So each week it's like being a fan in the audience and hearing it for the first time.'

The live 6 p.m. broadcast can be heard locally on WVTF National Public Radio station at 88.5 and 89.3 FM." (David Maurer, Daily Progress, November 2, 2003)