HAIL AND FAREWELL : KUSC-FM TO SALUTE ‘PRAIRIE’ FINALE

With strong hopes of cashing in to the tune of more than $100,000, public radio station KUSC-FM (91.5) has invited up to 4,000 Garrison Keillor fans to commemorate the final broadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion” by helping to re-create the sleepy, Midwestern feel of his mythical Lake Wobegon under the Southern California sun Saturday.

“It’s fair to wonder whether we are in part taking advantage of Garrison’s last breath,” said Wallace Smith, KUSC’s general manager. “Fund raising is certainly a part of it. But our motive is more to give our listeners a chance to share in this celebration. It amounts to a historical moment in radio when a phenomenon like this comes to an end. We think of it as a whale of an opportunity to have a party.”

KUSC’s party at Loyola Marymount University will include catered picnic lunches of barbecued chicken, hot dogs and Keillor’s own powder-milk biscuits; a Dixieland band and a white lattice gazebo; a general store full of “Prairie Home” memorabilia; men dressed as Norwegian bachelor farmers; women dressed like Minnesotan church ladies dispensing first aid, and Wallace Smith dressed as the small town mayor in a white top hat, tails, T-shirt, jeans and Reeboks.

There also will be, courtesy of cable-TV’s Disney Channel, a live, closed-circuit broadcast, direct from St. Paul, Minn., of Keillor’s final performance before retiring to an even quieter, more obscure world in Denmark.

Guests at KUSC’s “Prairie Home Social,” who are paying from $25 to $75 to attend, will also be able to pose for family album photographs beside a life-size cardboard cutout of Keillor.

KUSC estimates that 60,000 people tune in to Keillor’s show in the Los Angeles area each week, and many of them are not taking his retirement lightly.

“I have talked to people who are enormously sad,” said Susan Taylor, one of the event’s organizers. “People feel a real sense of grief. There is a universal feeling that they are losing a friend. And they want to do something to remember him by.”

To some it seems curious that a folksy, small-town world of secret midnight swims, mischief in grain elevators and meat loaf sandwiches on Wonder Bread could stir such passion in this big, sophisticated city so many miles from Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon. But the “folks” at KUSC believe that Keillor’s show continually unleashes dormant memories for many of the vast number of people who have come here from somewhere else.

“People have a tremendous nostalgia for what they’ve left behind,” Taylor said. “It’s great to think about winter when you don’t have to put on your boots anymore.”

In light of the program’s widespread appeal, KUSC will miss “Prairie Home Companion” too. Though the station will continue to broadcast archival episodes of the program, some dating back to 1974, in its usual time slot (Saturdays at 6 p.m.) through the end of the year, Smith said that he expects at least some decline in the size of the Keillor audience--and thus, some decline in the number of KUSC’s potential contributors.

Smith said that a large percentage of “Prairie Home Companion” fans turn to KUSC only for Garrison Keillor and turn away again once the curtain comes down on his show each week. He hopes that the repeat programs, most taped long before KUSC began airing Keillor in 1980 and therefore never before heard here in Los Angeles, will keep that audience coming back to KUSC.

“It’s the end of the live broadcasts,” Smith said. “But it’s not the end of the world.”

“Night Court’s” Harry Anderson will host KUSC’s one-day excursion into Keillor’s world of Jell-O and marshmallows, homespun values and masterful storytelling. The picnic and five hours of live country and folk music, spoofs of Lake Wobegon and its residents, a few tearful goodbys from Hollywood celebrities and the grand finale of “A Prairie Home Companion” itself begins at noon.

Tickets are available to the public. Information: (213) 743-2160.