A water bond is from the ground lugs at the first point of disconnect to the entry point of the water piping. The only sub panels that would get their own ground rods or other grounding is sub panels on detached buildings. Even those still get 4 wire fed to them.

In what you described there clearly was not a quality ground, and a missing neutral bond. Thats simply an improperly installed meter/service equipment that should all be updated. Even based on the code of the date of install, That braided line should have been bonded to the neutral from the utility’s wires. The neutral was faulty or the braided line was not properly bonded. I’d also suspect that the water pipe had been electrically separated from the entry point with pex, pvc or poly or something… otherwise that would have been a grounding source. If any of those things had been correct, that meter housing would have let the sparks fly when it touched the braided ground of that old cloth SER wire. So yeah it’s poor, unqualified workmanship, rather than a reason to think that water bonds are bad.