Odd Jobs

Muffler has been visiting the White House since childhood: His paternal grandfather was a chauffeur for presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge; his late father was an electrician who served his last East Wing years as the official clock-winder. Having studied typography in college, Muffler wrote himself into his current job when he volunteered to help address envelopes during the Carter administration. While he does cop to a few misspellings or mistakes over the years, he says all were caught; nothing less than letter-perfect has ever made it in front of a guest

WORM CURATOR

Kristian Fauchald

IN AN OTHERWISE UNREMARKABLE STORAGE ROOM in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, racks upon racks of worms float suspended in clear glass jars and appear to sway under the flickering fluorescent light. This is the domain of Kristian Fauchald, research zoologist and curator of worms. And though, yes, that is his formal title, his subjects are specifically in the phylum of annelids, or segmented worms. Many of its varieties -- leeches, for example -- are unnervingly common. But others, such as those that live around the sea vents at the bottom of the Atlantic, have been sighted by only a few. (Fauchald counts the thrill of discovery, or what he calls "that 'aha!' feeling that you are seeing what no one else has seen," as one of the many pleasures of his job.)

Annelids can range from a few millimeters in length to 18 feet; a disturbing number come equipped with bear-trap jaws. Fauchald has been fascinated by them since, as a teenager growing up in Arctic Norway, he came upon a small museum with a neglected collection of the creatures. Today, the Smithsonian's 500,000-specimen collection, which was started with the findings of a federal expedition off the East Coast in the 1870s, has been bolstered by contributions from Fauchald's own explorations. His latest discovery was made while snorkeling off of Papua New Guinea earlier this year: a polka-dotted worm that matches the rare coral on which it lives.

SILHOUETTIST

Marie Hartshorn Cheek

MARIE HARTSHORN CHEEK PREFERS MEN WITH FACIAL HAIR -- but it's strictly for the professional challenge. Cheek is a practitioner of the largely lost art of silhouette cutting, and, in her opinion, the profile of a bearded man makes for the best results. "You can cut every mustache and beard hair to get all of this tiny detail," she says. "They look really neat!" Hers is an art form that was last in vogue when Pierre L'Enfant was still drawing up plans for Washington. The small profiles were cut freehand and treasured by recipients, becoming the closest thing to a photograph most 18th-century Americans would ever possess.

Trained in painting and printmaking, Annandale-based Cheek came to silhouettes after years of doing technical drawings for the likes of the Army and Navy. "You go where the money is. It's tough for people with arts backgrounds," she explains. She finally went into business for herself doing caricatures at parties and events; when a client asked if she could also do silhouettes, she learned the craft and added it to her repertoire. Today, corporate shindigs make up most of the market for her delicate shadow portraits. An increasing number of individuals, though, are hiring her to immortalize their children and pets -- subjects that have trouble sitting still even for the five minutes the artist requires. But silhouetting, cautions Cheek, may not always be the ego boost most clients are after. Her creations are unforgiving of wens, weak chins and other physical imperfections. "If it's there," Cheek says grimly, "you have to put it in."

COASTER WALKER

Scott Taylor

HOURS BEFORE THE FIRST DELIGHTED SCREAMS will pierce the Maryland air, Scott Taylor is a precarious 10 stories above the ground, pacing wooden roller coaster slats and searching for anything out of place. As lead carpenter of the Six Flags America theme park in Largo, Taylor is responsible for inspecting the length of its two wooden coasters -- the Roar, built in 1998, and the Wild One, first constructed 89 years ago -- at the break of each dawn and searching for loose bolts, stress fractures and anything else his experience tells him could be a problem. In contrast to the two-minute or so rumble that thrill-seekers will nab from each ride, he'll spend 2 1/2 hours in the air methodically walking the same route, then come down to apply 90 minutes to examining the coasters' support pillars. On average, there are few major repairs: The bone-jarring jerking and ominous creaking of the coasters reflect a studied flexibility. "That's a part of the design," says Taylor. "It keeps the stresses from building up in one spot." But larger fixes do happen: Replacing a smashed-up piece of steel -- probably damaged by a heavy car load the night before -- once shut down a coaster for two hours.

Unlike park visitors, Taylor doesn't take a break from coasters in the off season. In the winter months, he and his staff of eight spend their time fashioning replacement parts out of pressure-treated pine from Georgia, making sure that, come summer, the coasters will be ready to creak to life yet again.

Brendan Coffey is a freelance writer based in New York City.