Open the hood of your car and you can summon an entire neighborhood. For real, need directions in the Appalachians, just stop somewhere with houses, open your hood and spend a few minutes staring at your engine.

It’s important to note that “the Appalachian mountains” span thousands of miles / kilometers across the United States and Canada and there aren’t many generalizations that hold up for folks across that entire span. That may not be clear to a lot of folks, especially those not familiar with the eastern USA.

Of the parts I’m familiar with, mostly the southern parts, I would say that advice probably works best if you already fit in enough that you might appear to be “one of them” versus if you are visibly a minority, particularly if you stop some place outside the more liberal towns and cities. I can tell you for sure that many peoples’ demeanor changes for the worse if/once they find out or assume you are gay and there are parts where you will find yard and road signs that specifically are anti-lgbt.

Granted, I’m not trying to paint the whole population of that 2,000+ mile swath of land as all being rabid bigots and racists either, just that for people reading that advice, I would say “your mileage my vary.”