Distribution fuse attached to primary instead of cutout

I was in upstate New York and noticed this setup, with a fuse hanging from the primary rather than being mounted in a cutout. I've never seen that before and I'm wondering if there is some kind of cutout mechanism that I wasn't understanding, or how you work with this without a cutout. And I'm wondering if it's common throughout that region.

Sorry for the lousy picture—I didn't get a good picture when I was there and got this from Google maps street view.