Cherry-Top

A ’56 Buick is under the arrow. (Photo by Fred Kern.)

A photograph, illustrated above, in my April Monthly Calendar-Report, has prompted an interesting e-mail exchange.
It’s a railfan photograph, but it has a flaw. Other railfans are in the photograph, along with their car, a black 1956 Buick. The photograph was shot in 1957.
It’s the one thing we hated as railfan photographers. We’d stake out a prime location, and some other railfan would wander into the picture.
For this we established photo-lines. Railfan photographers would all line up in a photo-line, and then hope some other railfan didn’t set up in front of the photo-line.
If someone did, we’d all complain, and hope the miscreant moved.
Obviously the miscreant didn’t move in the picture above, but the photographer shot anyway.
The image was too dramatic, and the ’56 Buick is barely visible.
You can barely see it in my blog-picture, which is why I applied the red arrow.
But the Buick is fairly apparent in my calendar-picture.
So I mentioned this miscreant in my calendar-report; which I spray to various constant-readers all over the planet.
One commented that steam-locomotive picture was extraordinary, so I asked if he saw the Buick.
He hadn’t, so I sent the arrowed picture.
“Must be a hidden cop takin’ pictures,” he said. “A bear in the bushes.”
“I don’t see a cherry-top,” I said.

A REAL cherry-top on a ’53 Chevy police-cruiser.

Years ago police cruisers had only a single red rotating beacon atop their cars. A “cherry-top.”
Now it’s a gigantic top-wide light-bar festooned with flashing strobes, red and blue and even yellow.
That light-bar has become lo-profile, to not destroy aerodynamics and top-speed.
And flashing strobes have even been installed behind the grill.
You think you’re being pulled over by a fireworks display.
But years ago it was just that single cherry-top.
So if that ’56 Buick was a police-cruiser, it would have a cherry-top.
“Cherry-Top” made it into a Bruce Springsteen lyric.
“There's a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cops
Cherry Tops
Rips this holy night.”
You have to be from the ‘60s to understand “Cherry-Top.”
Restoring order-out-of-chaos, ending youthful exuberance.
The lyrics are from “Jungleland” on the “Thunder-Road” album.
To me this song makes a mistake; it ain’t hip.
“The midnight gang's assembled
And picked a rendezvous for the night
They'll meet ‘neath that giant Exxon sign
That brings this fair city light.”
In the ‘60s, Exxon was still Esso. Esso became Exxon in 1973. I don’t know that cherry-tops were still in use after 1973.