What was going on when I was born?

YONKERS TWO years ago, a brash young Democratic City Councilman, Gerald E. Loehr, succeeded in ousting the incumbent Mayor, Angelo R. Martinelli, with a campaign promise of restoring fiscal integrity to the city and of eliminating the political divisiveness that he said had often characterized Yonker's politics under Mr. Martinelli's administration. Mr. Martinelli, a Republican who lost his bid for a fourth term by an 800-vote m argin, recently conceded that ''continued feuding with members of hi s own political party,'' may have cost him that election. Mr. Loehr, a 38-year-old lawyer whose grandfather served as Mayor of Yonkers during the Depression, was a three-term City Councilman before his election to the mayoral post. Mr. Martinelli, a 53-yearold self-made millionaire, served as Mayor from January 1974 to last December. ''I've learned the error of my ways,'' Mr. Martinelli said last week in his offices at Gazette Press, just down the hill from City Hall. ''I want another chance to get this city on the right track.'' Mr. Martinelli owns Gazette Press, which publishes Westchester Illustrated magazine.

''I shall always be a priest of love and a glad one. Once you've known what love can do, there's no disappointment and no despair.'' -D.H. Lawrence By LESLIE BENNETTS The daughter of a Baron, she was the aristocratic German wife of a proper English professor. The son of a coal miner, he was a young English writer just beginning a literary career that would make him one of the most controversial and celebrated artists of the 20th century. They were the unlikeliest of lovers, and sh e had three children and a conventional home to care for. But when Frieda von Richthofen Weekly met D.H. Lawrence, the power of their passion compelled her toabandon her family and run away with him to l ive the gypsy life with a nomadic genius.

''THERE is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman.'' With this proclamation, Walter Gropius opened the Weimar Bauhaus in 1919 and dedicated it to breaking down the ''arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist.'' More than 60 years later, in spite of the reverence of museums, collectors and even the public at large for the Bauhaus's products, we are not yet able to accept without reserve the concept of craft as art. New York City in particular, perhaps because of its position at the pinnacle of the art world, has been slow to admit craftsmen to the exalted ranks of the fine artists. This is despite the pioneering efforts of the Museum of Modern Art, which almost from its inception in 1929 has been dedicated to promoting Bauhaus notions of integrated creativity, and the presence of the museum's near neighbor, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the American Craft Museum), celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. What other city can boast two such showcases for esthetically oriented crafts?

THE Grumman Corporation's case against the proposed takeover by a Dallas-based conglomerate went to United States District Court last week at the same time that Wall Street analysts were speculating that rival bidders might join the fight to buy Grumman's stock by offering more than the $45 a share that the LTV Corporation wants to pay. If that happened, one analyst said, the Bethpage-based defense manufacturer could become the grand prize in a bidding war similiar to the protracted fight earlier this year to take control of Conoco. The E.I. du Pont Company acquired Conoco after outbidding Seagram's, the liquor distributor. Grumman officials declined to comment on the possibility that other companies had expressed any interest. Financial analysts say that defense-related issues are attractive now because of the Reagan Administration's commitment to an increased defense budget, which is thought to hold the promise of a decade of prosperity for defense and aerospace companies like Grumman.

Haunted by the memory of the assassination four days ago of President Anwar el-Sadat while he was surrounded by aides and bodyguard s, Egyptian officials turn ed his funeral today into an intense exercise in security control. Thousands of soldiers, airmen, policemen and special security agents were detailed to insure that the leaders of more than 80 nations who came here for the funeral, as well as Egyptian officials and the family of the slain President, would be safe. Policemen and soliders carrying automatic weapons guarded hundreds of miles of streets in this sprawling city. Sandbagged gun emplacements could be seen in the lobbies and on balconies of official buildings. Armored cars filled with soliders in battle dress stood ready in every major square, and helicopters circled continuously overhead.

Two men, both 5-foot, 10-inch, mustachioed figures in their mid-30's,-studied each other across a rear corridor of the United States Courthouse on Foley Squ are on the afternoon of Sept. 25. They had never met or spoken. One of the men, Jack Henry Abbott, was in handcuffs. Surrounded by Federal marshals, he was awaiting arraignment on a charge of having escaped from a Federal halfway house in July after killing a man on the Lower East Side. The case attracted wide attention because Mr. Abbott, who had been granted a conditional release in June after spending 25 of his 37 years in prison, was a literary protege of Norman Mailer, the writer, and was the author of a much-acclaimed new book on life behind bars. The other man in the corridor had a snub-nosed .38-caliber pistol strapped to his waist and, in a black leather holder in his pocket, gold shield No. 540 of the New York City Police Department. He was Detective William J. Majeski. Bill Majeski knew a great deal about Jack Abbott. As Mr. Abbott had been the hunted, Detective Majeski had been the hunter.

PEKING In the depths of the Forbidden City a few weeks ago, the actress June Lockhart deputized herself as assistant commissar for crowd control and waded into a group of 500 quizzical Chinese, who were innocently interrupting her scene. She gave them her rendition of the football cheer, ''Push 'em back! Push 'em back! Wwwaaaaay back!'' ''When you call for quiet on the set and you're surrounded by half the population of Peking, you got problems,'' said Robert M. Baldwin Jr., the photography director, who had problems. They were trying to film a scene for ''Peking Encounter,'' an hourlong television movie in which an American tourist (played by Diana Canova) falls in love with a Chinese musician . And they were discovering t hat in a country of one billion people, crowds are a dime a millio n. Mr. Baldwin was acquiring a vast film library of wide-eyed Chi nese staring straight into his lens.

Plans for the 31-story residential tower on the northwest corner of Broadway and 96th Street have been changed from a rental project with 20 percent low-income tenants to a luxury condominium. At the same time, the design has been altered to incorporate community garden facilities and many features of the city's ''housing quality'' zoning program such as tenant rooftop recreational space and windows in the public corridors. It will also have a two-story health club w ith a swimming pool and 36,000 square feet of commercialspace.

The Philadelphia Phillies survived the last-chance odds for the second straight time today when they defeated the Montreal Expos, 6-5, on a pinch-hit home run by George Vukovich in the 10th inning. It was the third successful pinch-hit by Vukovich in four games, and he delivered this one off Jeff Reardon, the star of the Expos' bullpen. And when the ball cleared the right-field fence to end an afternoon of rousing baseball, the playoff for the National League's Eastern title was deadlocked at two games apiece. The deadlock and the title will be decided tomorrow with each team returning with its No. 1 pitcher: Steve Carlton for the Phillies and Steve Rogers for the Expos. They met in the opening game last Wednesday in Montreal, and Rogers prevailed by 3-1. But since then, after taking a two-game lead in the series, the Expos have lost two in a row in Philadelphia.

After seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company's ''The Life & Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby,'' you're going to feel tremendous admiration for the many people who have had the talent and stamina to create such a marathon theatrical event. Having lasted for eight and a half hours, you're also going to be pretty pleased with your own stamina. Yet, in the end, your greatest admiration may be for this production's unseen host, Charles Dickens. ''Nicholas Nickleby'' honors this writer by bringing much of his third novel to the stage - and it may honor him even more when it fails. It takes an artist of genius to escape a great theatrical troupe's most Herculean attempts to pin him down. The Royal Shakespeare Company is remarkable, and the evidence can be found in every nook and cranny of the Plymouth Theater these days and nights. ''Nicholas Nickleby'' contains maybe a dozen performances that will fix Dickens's characters for a lifetime. Two gifted directors, Trevor Nunn and John Caird, and their equally imaginative designers have miraculously staged the show to match Dickens's narrative technique - a technique that in many ways anticipated the story-telling fluidity of movies. They also choreograph space, bodies and light to immerse the audience totally in the atmosphere of Dickens's 19th-century world.

D O spitballs freeze up in cold weather? ''If they did,'' said Jeff Torborg, a Yankee coach, ''guys would just go to grease. That never freezes.'' On opening day in Toronto several years ago, the Chicago White Sox players came out for batting practice and saw snow on the field. They hooked catchers' shinguards to their feet and went skiing in the outfield. To keep warm in the bullpen on a bitterly cold day, a certain relief pitcher known to Phil Rizzuto fortified himself with a flask of bourbon. He was suddenly called into the game. Rizzuto was asked if it bothered his pitching. ''Are you kidding?'' replied Rizzuto. ''He pitched better. He felt no pain.''

The memory of Anwar el-Sadat descending from an Egyptian plane onto Israeli soil will now be indelibly linked with that of a blood-soaked grandstand in Cairo. As his journey to Jerusalem four years ago raised hopes of an end to war in the Middle East, his assassination last week raised fears that the limited peace he achieved with Israel would not long outlast him. The Egyptian leader, who rose to prominence through the army, was cut down by men in uniform while watching a parade commemorating the army's greatest triumph - the surprise attack across the Suez Canal that began the 1973 Middle East war. While spectators, including the President's guards, had their eyes trained on jets mock-fighting above, a truck towing an artillery piece broke from the line of march and four men sprang out, hurling a smoke bomb and grenades and raking the grandstand with submachine gun fire. In the carnage and the chaos, President Sadat and six other spectators were killed and nearly 40 were wounded. At least one assassin was killed, the others captured.