These charming portraits, produced by Joe Richman, will be playing weekly on public radio, through the end of February, weekends on ''The Next Big Thing'' on WNYC in New York (820 AM and 93.9 FM) and Wednesday afternoons on ''All Things Considered'' on National Public Radio). He's part of a series of profiles called ''New York Works Stories,'' about people in vanishing professions, including a woman who runs a custom bra shop and a man who builds water towers. Backerman is a natural storyteller, perfect for radio, because the story inside the story inside a story can be hard for a camera to capture. He reports that his wife has told him, ''You're just a novelty.'' ''The bottles are worth so much I'd be better off pulling all my bottles out of every customer's house and selling them slowly as antique collectibles,'' he says ruefully. Once this endearing eccentric would have been a New York cliché, but now - not yet 50 years old - he's as anachronistic as the seltzer bottles he delivers. I've got a truck that's extremely chaotic and to anyone else would appear to be a shambles. I've got guide books, I've got tour books, in case I'm curious when I'm driving by I see an old building and I want to know a little bit about the history. I've got some aspirin in case anyone who comes in the truck's got a headache.

''Let me start from scratch,'' he begins. Walter Backerman is a particular kind of New York character.

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