What was going on when I was born?

Although the stock market's 37-point advance last week suggests that an end to the six-month slide in prices may be at hand, some analysts say that the gains constitute little more than a correction, and they doubt that stocks will move appreciably higher in coming months. Given current interest rates and bond yields, Stewart J. Pillette of Drexel Burnham Lambert says that further gains in the Dow Jones industrial average would make stocks overpriced relative to bonds, prompting renewed sell-offs. However, while a ceiling seems to have been established, he says, uncertainty about a number of other factors - the impact of the so-called All Savers certificates on future rate movements, for example - provides considerable downside risk. He expects the market to stay in the mid-800 range for much of the current quart er, and doubts that a rally will begin until the market perceives tha t a sustained decelerati on in interest rates is under way. But nervousness in the markets is so pronounced that any bit of bad news could send stocks down again, perhaps as low as 7 50.

We were moving slowly up the sharp slope of Knocknarea, a flattopped mountain on the west coast of Ireland that sits between Sligo town and the sea. Shin-deep in heather, we had wandered away from the trail, eager to slip out of the mainstream of Sunday morning hikers. The hearty local folk - children skipping, singing and giggling, women dressed for church rather than for the trail, grandparents carrying walking sticks - seemed to charge up the steep incline, while the two of us inched along, red-faced and gasping. Above, on the summit, was our goal: a massive pile of rocks, 80 feet high, traditionally celebrated as the burial cairn of the sixthcentury Celtic warrior queen, Maeve. As we rested we looked over the green and gold view that expanded as we climbed, and saw rain clouds gathering over Sligo. They were rolling toward us - 30 seconds away, we guessed -and we hastily pulled rain gear and hats from our backpacks as we watched the storm darken a wide swatch of field and forest to our right, along Ballisodare Bay. Ten seconds away, and we imagined we could hear the rain rattling on the roof of Primrose Grange, the 18th-century farmhouse where we were staying, which was tucked into Knocknarea's lowest slope, just below us but out of sight.

BROOKVILLE CAN a university concert hall be all things to all people: a focal point for the cultural life of a community as diverse and dispersed as the Island, and a teaching tool for the education and training of young adults? The administration at Long Island University's C.W. Post Center thinks so, and on Saturday night at 8:30 Zubin Mehta will lift his baton to lead the New York Philharmonic in Mozart's ''Jupiter'' Symphony and officially open the college's new $4.4 million Concert Theater. It is ''a mini-Lincoln Center for Long Island performing arts,'' according to the hall's director, David Black. The inaugural concert, especially planned for a black-tie $100-and $250-a-seat benefit audience (reservations are still available), will tell whether the simple 170-foot circular concrete building with its high-tech interior, in violet, burgundy and red, can do the job technically.

The United States advanced to the Davis Cup tennis final today, but only after John McEnroe and Peter Fleming had come within one warning of being defaulted in their doubles match with Peter McNamara and Phil Dent of Australia. McEnroe and Fleming, the Wimbledon and United States Open champions and the world's top-ranked team, gave the United States an insurmountable 3-0 lead in the semifinal series with an 8-6, 6-4, 8-6 victory. The Americans will meet Argentina, l ed by Jose-Luis Clerc and Guillermo Vilas, in the final on Dec. 11 at an indoor arena in this country, probably at Cincinnati or New Y ork's Madison Square Garden. Although seldom in trouble against a team that had played together only twice before, McEnroe and Fleming were almost defaulted for verbal abuse, which would have meant that the three-of -five series would be deci ded tomorrow.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Audie Bock, author of ''Japanese Film Directors,'' was assistant producer of the international film version of Akira Kurosawa's ''Kagemusha,'' and has translated Mr. Kurosawa's autobiography, scheduled for publication in 1982. By AUDIE BOCK ''Modern technology and and I do not get along,'' says Akira Kurosawa. ''My son tells me I look like a chimpanzee when I try to dial the telephone, and it would be hopeless for me to try to drive a car.'' Despite his disclaimer, the internationally famous 71-year-old Japanese director, renowned for such films as ''Rashomon,'' ''Seven Samurai'' and ''Ikiru'' has long been regarded not only as a great artist with profound influence on such younger American counterparts as Francis Coppola and George Lucas, but also as one of the movies' foremost technical innovators. Next Friday, Mr. Kurosawa will be present in New York City to introduce the first complete English-subtitled retrospective of 26 of his films at the Japan Society of New York. Mr. Kurosawa's work has been stimulating Western audiences since his 1950 ''Rashomon'' first drew attention to the cinema of Japan by winning an award at the Venice International Film Festival.

The costs and complications involved in financing a home in today's world of 19 percent mortgages have become so great that they are supplanting the house itself as the most important aspect of any purchase. People in America no longer shop for homes; they shop for financing. ''With all the talk about financing a home, people forget they are buying shelter,'' said James T. DePietro, a sales associate with First Minneapolis Realty. ''Sometimes they lose sight of the fact that they want to be near a park or a school or in a home that reflects their personality. The first thing people ask today when you show them a home is: What will the monthly payment be? We are seeing homes bid up because of the attractiveness of their financing and not for their aesthetic qualities.'' Financing has always been a serious concern in the selection of any home, but it has become the overriding concern now that most Americans can no longer qualify for the simple, low-cost, fixed-rate, 30-year bank mortgage that sustained their parents and grandparents since the 1930's. The institution that made America a nation of homeowners is being replaced by a smorgasbord of creative financing techniques that makes home buying and selling more risky and complicated than at any time since the Great Depression.

Like many young people facing today's high-cost residential market, Stephen Koval, a 28-year-old statistician, is not yet in a position to buy a home. So when he applied for a job with the pharmaceutical manufacturing firm of Boehringer Ingelheim at its new corporate headquarters in Danbury this year, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the company had a program to help pay part of his rent each month. Appreciating that more young people are priced out of home purchases, the company recently had introduced a rent differential subsidy to its benefits package, which already provided a mortgage interest differential for homeowners. With his subsidy of $150, Mr. Koval's $500 a month, one-bedroom cottage in Bridgewater, Conn., is costing him only $75 more than his $275 a month two-bedroom farmhouse in Illinois. ''It was a big incentive in taking the job,'' he said.

THE proposal by the county to create a public power agency, a once fiercely controversial issue that now seems to enjoy broad political support, last week became the focus of a new dispute, this time over how and when to present the issue to Westchester's voters. The Board of Legislators, at its Monday meeting, fixed March 16, the date set aside for village elections, for the referendum. The Board felt that adding the countywide referendum to the local ballots would save the cost of a separate election, at least in the villages. But the villages had already indicated that they saw it differently. The packet of material dealing with the referendum that was set before each Legislator contained a resolution from the Westchester County Village Officials Association asking that the power-agency question be decided at another time.

Former Pres ident Richard M. Nixon, in a bluntly worded statement insupport of th e sale of Airborne Warning and Control System planes to Saudi Arabia, said that ''if it were not for the intense opposition''of Prime Mini ster Menachem Begin of Israel and ''parts of the American Jewi sh community, the Awacs sale would go through.'' The statement, to be released today, came as the battle was joined in Congress on President Reagan's proposed $8.5 billion sale of Awacs and other air combat equipment to the Saudis. Congress can block the sale if both houses vote to do so before the end of this month. Saudis Opposed to 'Partnership' In Jidda, Saudi Arabia, the official Saudi press agency reiterated yesterday that Saudi Arabia was against any ''partnership'' on the Awacs, according to The Associated Press. The press agency said the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, had made that point during his meeting in New York Friday with Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.

Escaped convicts in Michigan have traded their prison stripes for welfare checks, and many are getting away with it, an investigation has disclosed. A team of investigators from the state and city police and the Department of Social Services spent three months trying to track down 92 fugitives known to be collecting welfare.

The Dodgers are gone. So are the Schaeffer and Rheingold breweries, the United States Navy and, over the last decade, 400,000 people. More than 1,000 business enterprises have al so left New York City's biggest borou gh. But the Brooklyn Union Gas Company has stayed. It has no choice. The company's principal assets are its more than 3,600 miles of underground pipes. ''We can't move,'' Eugen e H. Luntey, president andchief executive officer, says patly. ''We're about the only big company left here.'' That's working out fine for the eighth-biggest natural gas utility in the United States. By supplying gas to 1.1 million meters in Brooklyn, Staten Island and two-thirds of Queens, Brooklyn Union has seen its sales double in less than five years to $628 million, while its profits have climbed by 78 percent. Along the way, Mr. Luntey and his company have developed a reputation for an eloquence rare in the utility industry.

When the 10-year tax abatement on the building at 400 East 54th Street expires next June, the owners plan to remove the building from rent stabilization. They say they are entitled to collect free-market rents once the city starts collecting full taxes. The building, like about 700 others in the city's five boroughs, took advantage of Section 421 of the Real Property Tax Law, which provided a tax abatement to developers of residential properties. Section 421, which began in 1971 and will continue through 1986, offers a 10-year tax abatement. Under it, improvements to the property, meaning any new construction, are exempt from taxes for the first two years, 80 percent exempt in the next two years, 60 percent exempt in the next two years, until the building is paying full taxes.