“Is Black River Falls near Plainfield... where Ed Hein lived? Wondering if there was a connection.”
It was Ed Gein. From my experiences in small Wisconsin towns, my feeling is most of them are SQUIRRELY as hell-especially the further north you go.
I have gotten the same vibe, along with a sort of condescending mockery anytime they divined (from my car's plates or my telling them) I was from Iowa.
WRT Michael Lesy's book, it is sort of a creepy tabula rasa for people who want to take a bygone culture's norms and make them seem weirder than they were. In 1890 one probably didn't have to look too far to find rural and small-town lunatics who managed to avoid detection or being committed, just like most of America today... but today a judge or an advocacy group would make sure they stayed out with the masses until they did something atrocious or frightful and then the media would blame guns, edged weapons or hand tools, or white guys, or Republicans.
I’ve always thought the reverse was true in Maine. The areas around Portland are screwball central while the outlying areas (and it is a pretty big state and very rural) are largely rural “Mayberry” type places.