CENTRALIA � Friday might have been the best day of Jameson Cooper�s 9-year-old life.

Legs crossed, Cooper sat at Stowers Farm in Centralia and waited in line with his mom Friday evening to go inside the gated venue for the Luke Bryan Farm Tour concert.

Cooper said he started listening to the country music star when he was in kindergarten, and has admired Bryan since. He asked for concert tickets for his birthday, but his parents surprised him with VIP tickets instead, giving him and his mom, Monika Cooper, early access to the stage.

His family lives five minutes from Stowers Farm, where the concert was held.

The farm tour, which hits seven cities across the country this year, takes place mostly on farms, but also a ranch and its final stop at Mid-America Motorworks, an auto supplier in Illinois. Bryan�s Centralia stop was the only Missouri concert.

The concert series pays homage to farmers and coincides with Bryan�s new album �Farm Tour: Here�s to the Farmer.�

If the concert was anywhere else, the Coopers probably would not have been able to attend. With small children, traveling is a challenge, said Monika Cooper.

�It�s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,� she said.

Centralia schools closed Friday because of the concert. Kelly Dickerson, a fifth-grade social studies teacher at Centralia Intermediate School, said they shut down because of concerns about safety and traffic congestion.

�There�s no way buses could�ve brought kids home� in time, she said.

Centralia Police Department, Audrain County Sheriff�s Office, Sturgeon Police Department, Mexico Public Safety and the Missouri State Highway Patrol together had about 32 officers patrolling the parking lot and concert, said Sgt. Joe Bellamy with the Centralia Police Department. About 100 private security guards also were on site, he said. His department worked closely with the Audrain County Sheriff�s Office for four or five months preparing for the concert, Bellamy said.

The Cooper County Sheriff�s Office provided a trailer for Callaway County Joint Communications to set up a dispatching center, where all emergency information was centralized, Bellamy said. Five ambulances also were on site.

Bellamy said officials expected 18,000 to 20,000 people at the concert � more than quadrupling the size of Centralia, which has a population of 4,100.

�I�ve been waiting a long time to see this many people in a hayfield,� Bryan said to the crowd early on in his set.

The only other event that attracts a similar number of people is Centralia�s annual Anchor Festival, which celebrates the invention of the earth anchor by A.B. Chance in 1912. The company A.B. Chance Co. � now Hubbell Power Systems � operates in Centralia. The Anchor Festival, held in June, attracts about 20,000 people.

Centralia residents said the Luke Bryan concert has been the talk of the town. Ally Clark, 23, a lifelong Centralia resident, said the concert is �putting Centralia on the map� as it attracted fans from across the region and the country.

The Luke Bryan Farm Tour also awards a scholarship to college students from farming families in the towns he has visited.

�I just think it�s great that an entertainer wants to come to a small town and help out a small town,� Dickerson said. �You don�t have many entertainers who appreciate the small town life.�