In many ways, the fictional Lake Wobegon of Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” bears a number of similarities to any typical small town in Maine. We have our churches, our high school sports teams and our above-average children, our general stores and restaurants, our farmers and hunters and men and women about town – all strong and good-looking, by the way.

Maybe that’s why we feel such an affinity for the American Public Media radio program, which has aired from 6 to 8 p.m. every Saturday (and again from noon til 2 p.m. Sundays) on Maine Public Radio for the better part of 30 years. And maybe that’s why, when it was announced last summer that MPBN and the Maine Center for the Arts planned a live broadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion” at the Bangor Auditorium this Saturday, May 3, tickets sold out in a matter of weeks.

But it’s not just the similarities between Minnesota and Maine that appeal to us; we also love the program’s gentle, sometimes corny but always smart humor, and its rotating cast of characters, like the cowpokes Dusty and Lefty, and Guy Noir, Private Eye. If we could buy Powder Milk Biscuits in the bright blue box, we surely would, along with heaps of ketchup and Bebop-a-Rebop Rhubarb Pie. And we love Keillor himself, with his warm, convivial baritone voice, the authenticity of his stories and his love of music and poetry.

So, sadly, only a lucky 3,500 people who snapped up tickets will actually get to attend Saturday’s broadcast – but the good thing, of course, is that everyone gets to hear it when it airs on MPBN. Ticket holders are advised to get there early, as doors open at 5 p.m. and will close promptly at 5:45 p.m. For more information, visit www.prairiehome.publicradio.org, www.mpbn.net, or www2.umaine.edu/mca.

– EMILY BURNHAM