What was going on when I was born?

PATERSON WITH characteristic reserve, Robert J. Challice puts it this way: ''I will do anything, risk anything, pay any price and go anywhere to get done what I have to do.'' His flamboyant words go well with his appearance - 235 pounds trimly distributed over a 6-foot, 7-inch frame, blond hair and aviator-style sunglasses - and with the tools of his trade, a trunkful of weaponry. Mr. Challice is hunts fugitivesfor the Passaic County Sheriff's Department, and he is anything but shy about who he is and what he does. He talks about himself with the same aggressive gusto with which he tracks down wanted men, something he is said to do with extraordinary skill.

THE roofs are leaking, decks are rotting away, paint is peeling from window frames. Cars bounce and skid on driveways that are cracked and collapsing after years of neglect. A pall hangs over many of the once-proud condominium homes around the state, especially those built in the boom period of the early 1970's. Now reaching a structural midlife crisis many of these developments - originally touted by their promoters as a worry-free, maintenance-free utopian life style -are in need of major renovations and repairs. And their residents are beginning to realize that utopia may shortly become a paradise lost unless large amounts of money are raised quickly. Condominium consultants now suggest that 10 years seems to be a pivotal time, similar to 40,000 miles on an automobile, when a lot of systems start to fail.

TO the casual eye, little has changed in the Treasury Department. The portraits of past Secretaries still stare down from the walls in a corner of the second floor. Bureaucrats bustle through the marble-floored corridors. Even the offices of the top officials remain unchanged - redecorating has been banned for budget reasons. Yet all is not quiescent in this house of finance. Already, as rarely in the past, the Treasury Department has emerged as a seat of intellectual ferment. How the new Treasury will function - and whether ferment will become turmoil - depends on how easily men representing a variety of economic viewpoints mesh their different outlooks and how well the new Secretary will be able to bring an intellectual discipline to men who in the past have mostly been free spirits.

BUCHANAN IN the giant steam-turbine building of Indian Point 3 the other day, the scene resembled an operating room. Like a seriously ill patient, the massive turbine had been opened, and its steel innards lay exposed as workmen struggled to remove the remaining parts. The blue-white lights in the ceiling illuminated the immaculate interior - seemingly as big as the main waiting room of Grand Central Terminal - as the workmen, called millwrights, made a racket with an air-powered wrench to remove a final casing. On days when Indian Point 3 is ''on line,'' producing its customary 900 million watts of electricity, the building hums with the vibration, plant officials say, as a row of four turbines on one shaft spins a generator almost as big as a locomotive at 1,800 revolutions per minute.

VERONA AT THE turn of the century, Frederick Kip's home was his Rhinestyle castle, the 30-room stone edifice having been built by the textile machinery manufacturer atop one of Essex County's highest mountains. Today, this symbol of sequestered affluence is the center of community controversy. The Borough Council here has voted to buy the castle, but some people say that the town cannot afford to restore and maintain it. The council accepted a $183,000 Green Acres grant from the state for half the purchase price, and it approved a bond ordinance for the other half. Last December, however, it voted to delay the purchase until April so that a 12-member commission appointed by Mayor Frank Albright will have had time to study how the town might use and care for the castle and its surrounding eight acres.

The director of the Puerto Rico Cancer Institute has urged the island's government to ban a talc coating that is added to most rice sold here, out of concern that it may contribute to the risk of stomach cancer. Dr. Angel Roman-Franco said in an interview that after a two-year laboratory study, ''The data we have is sufficiently alarming to have led us to recommend to the Secretary of Health that the continued use of talc be forbidden.'' Dr. Jaime Rivera Dueno, Puerto Rico's Secretary of Health, said in an interview that he had not acted on the recommendation or disclosed the study results because he had requested more tests of the talc. High Per Capita Consumption The per capita consumption of rice in Puerto Rico is 100 pounds a year, among the highest in the world. Most of the rice purchased on the island is coated with a mixture of talc, a mineral, and glucose, a sugar, which make the rice look shiny. Package labels instruct consumers to wash off the coating before the rice is cooked, but there is some question how much of the talc is removed by washing.

PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS By Isaiah Berlin. Edited by Henry Hardy. Introduction by Noel Annan. Illustrated. 219 pp. New York: The Viking Press. $13.95. ONLY the title is bland. The contents of this fourth and final volume of Isaiah Berlin's ''Selected Writings'' bear the distinctive stamp of one of the great thinkers and writers of our age. The general reader, unfamiliar with his work, or put off by the formidable subject matter of the earlier volumes - ''Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays,'' ''Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas,'' ''Russian Thinkers'' - will find ''Personal Impressions'' altogether welcoming and rewarding.

NEWARK THE sound of the New Jersey Symphony has been stilled for four months, but the fury is beginning to mount as management, the musicians, the conductor and the trustees become increasingly frustrated by a faltering fund drive that threatens not only the remainder of the current season, but also the orchestra's very existence. Within the last two weeks: - The musicians, who ended a 12-week strike by accepting a new three-year contract on Dec. 22, have threatened to file a grievance against management with the National Labor Relations Board. - The executive director has said that the wisest thing might be to scrap this season entirely and try to start the next one with a balanced budget. - The conductor-artistic director has expressed regrets at having made a commitment to join the organization. All factions expressed disappointment that the people of the state and government officials seemed unconcerned about the plight of the symphony. Instead, it was felt, the people and their government seem willing to sit back and see New Jersey lose the gains that have been made in the eight years since the orchestra achieved major status.

In the 1920's the old Capitol Theater in New York had a staff of a half dozen working under a music director to prepare a score for each film. Full orchestras were as common in the greatest movie palaces as in opera houses. Without them, the villainy, farce and droning sound of the projector might have disappointed many who had come to be thrilled by moving pictures. Silent films may still have musical accompaniments, but usually only on recorded soundtracks. A live musician is rarely seen at a movie except as a member of the audience. Gradually though, theater organs are being restored. Carnegie Hall Cinema, for example, will begin a bi-weekly series of silent films next Wednesday with Lee Erwin playing his own scores at the theater organ. Two other major presentations of live music and film may also be heard and seen this week. The first is, of course, the epic four-hour reconstruction of Abel Gance's 1927 silent film, ''Napoleon.'' Carmine Coppola is conducting 60 members of the American Symphony Orchestra in his own freshly written accompaniment. Tonight, for the last time before Mr. Coppola goes on tour with the score and tapes it for soundtrack showings, warm bodies of orchestral players will fill the pit at Radio City Music Hall to play for 6,000 listeners.

POLITICAL families still stand out as rare breeds in politics - the Kennedys, the Wagners, the Roosevelts and, closer to the Island, the D'Amatos in Nassau County and the Cohalans in Suffolk. Now, another political family - the Paces of West Islip - is emerging as a powerful force in Suffolk County politics. Anthony Pace, the Islip Town Republican leader, represents the political arm of an unusual and highly influential family that is a dominant force in Islip Town politics and business and also extends its influence beyond the town and even Suffolk County borders. Mr. Pace studiously avoids publicity, but is still the most visible of the three brothers Mr. Pace refers to fondly as ''The Three Musketeers.'' There are some critics who contend that the brothers are too powerful and do not hesitate to use their political power to enhance their business interests.

ALL the people who died last week in the fire at a boarding home for the elderly in Point Pleasant Beach, as well as those who died in earlier fires in Bradley Beach and Keansburg, were old, most were poor, some were mentally retarded or senile, many were bereft of family and none could really speak up for themselves. All told, the fires took 58 lives - 31 in Keansburg on Jan. 9, 23 in Bradley Beach last July and four in Point Pleasant Beach, and some of the Point Pleasant survivors may yet succumb. Some of those who died, as well as some of the survivors, had been turned out of protective institutions, such as state and county hospitals, where they might have spent half their lifetimes or more. They had been led to believe they would be able to live full lives in the community.

472-4142. By JILL JONNES Isolated from the rest of the Bronx on a small peninsula jutting into Long Island Sound, Harding Park on Clason Point is a folksy, ramshackle village with an aura of another era. Its narrow macadam roads wander here and there, without benefit of sidewalks or street lamps, diverging off into muddy lanes and alleys. There are junked cars in driveways and wash drying on lines. Winterized bungalows of every size and shape - from tarpaper hovels perched on minuscule 25-by-49 plots to sizable Cape Cod houses with old-fashioned awnings and neat lawns - stand under tall trees. Two years ago, the city became the landlord of Harding Park when its owner defaulted and gave up ever developing this lush spot with what one longtime resident called the ''million dollar'' view - a sweeping panorama across the water of Hell Gate Bridge, La Guardia Airport, College Point in Queens, and the Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges.