Here is what really bad top wood looks like. You can see the one on the left is growing straight, but the two in the middle are impossible.
One objective in choosing tops is to find ones where the fibers run straight from one end to the other, and top wood is usually split out to get this, but when trees have twists like these, they’re only suitable for building a fort stockade. That may be why they’re where they are: as part of the fort wall at Fort Wilkins State Park, at the northernmost tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.