What was going on when I was born?

Two years ago a builder from Bayside, Queens, bought an odd-shaped parcel of land in a prime location in the Kew Gardens section of his borough. He paid $30,000. The lot had at one time been part of land laid out as a street. But the street was never built and, eventually, the city sold the land at auction as surplus property. For years, the land lay idle because it was so near the Long Island Rail Road tracks. Then the Bayside builder, Charles J. Belanich, came along.

SOUNDING THE TERRITORY By Laurel Goldman. 307 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $13.50. IN life we are frequently confounded by the pathos and even the malevolence of the mad; in imaginative literature, by their sensitivity, wisdom and flights of poetic insight. American literature in particular has celebrated the madman as visionary: the rebel, the nonconformist, the prophet, the victim of the abyss who, like Melville's tragic Pip, has ''seen God's foot upon the treadle of the loom'' and can never return to the comforts of sanity again. Novels of the postwar era - most famously ''Catch-22'' and ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' employ engagingly mad narrators to bring into question the sanity of society; more recently, authors of such novels as ''I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,'' ''Birdy'' and ''Endless Love'' have succeeded not only in presenting madness in various degrees but in giving it a voice - or voices. These novels are, among other things, triumphs of style.

ALBANY THE State of New York could become a major taxpayer to Long Island school districts and county governments under a new proposal recently unveiled here. The State Board of Equalization and Assessment would like thousands of acres of state parkland, open space, state university campuses and large hospital complexes on the Island - 32,294 acres in all - to be subject to all local property taxes. When phased in after five years, the plan would produce nearly $28 million on the Island, $3.4 million in Nassau and $24.3 million in Suffolk, the board predicted. The plan is designed to end the quiltwork of special acts of the Legislature and exceptions that allows some local governments to tax some state-owned lands while barring taxes on other portions of the 3.72 million acres of land owned by the state.

CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE BUCKING the tide that has swept most of the rest of the state and country, Cape May County has been undergoing considerable housing development in recent years. In the face of this, state and private environmentalists have tried to preserve the county's scenic and ecologically sensitive areas. One problem, environmentalists say, is that a law designed to prevent haphazard development in wetlands is being circumvented or ignored. New figures provided by the county's Planning Board last week show that both the population and the number of new dwelling units rose about 38 percent between 1970 and 1981. There are now 82,000 residents and 73,337 houses, apartments and condominiums in the county (hotels and motels are not included in the statistics).

John Bagley scored 35 points, 21 in the second half, to lead Boston College to a 90-81 Big East victory over St. John's yesterday at Alumni Hall in Queens. ''He was super,'' Lou Carnesecca, the St. John's coach, said of Bagley. ''It was some exhibition with shots underneath, outside, left-handed and right-handed.'' Bagley, a 6-foot junior guard, equaled his single-game career high in scoring as Boston College, trailing by 3 at halftime, scored 56 points in the second half. He scored 35 points against Wake Forest in the second round of the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament last year.

JUST as travel industry efforts to promote Long Island abroad as a prime vacation spot are beginning to translate into increasing numbers of European, Japanese and South American visitors, some people here are expressing doubts about whether those numbers will translate into better profits for them. Most of the skepticism comes from the East End, where tourism is a largely May-to-September trade, and it is generally believed that extensive promotional efforts aimed at the international affluent serve only to attract more people at peak season, when they can't be accommodated. In western Suffolk and Nassau, however, where the trade has traditionally been oriented toward the year-round business traveler, enthusiasm for those efforts is high. Bern Rotman, director of the Bureau of Information in New York State's Department of Commerce, is among those who consider the whole of Long Island ''underutilized'' by vacationers and would like to see that corrected. He points to tourism data compiled by his office as evidence that there is much room for expansion: While average per-capita travel expenditures statewide in 1980 - the latest year for which figures are available - amounted to $550 a trip, the Island's average was $429. The much lower figure, Mr. Rotman said, showed that there was a huge percentage of day trips to the Island, particularly to its popular parks, and a relatively low number of extended visits.

There is not a negotiating session in sight. On the horizon, instead of a strike, is the prospect of the first complete baseball year - start of spring training to end of World Series - since 1979. In some places, teams already have started spring training. In the rest, they will begin in the next few days. The regular season begins April 5, which means clubs have approximately six weeks to answer all of the questions that have accumulated since the end of last season. Trades and free-agent forays have shuffled rosters of all but a couple of teams, and more trades can be expected before the teams leave their camps in April.

Harry Prince was all but finished building a $250,000 house in eastern Long Island two years ago when the owners changed their minds. Among other things, they decided they didn't like the flooring in one room or the colors of several others. So Mr. Prince, a 34-yearold general contractor from North Babylon, L.I., called his men back to redo the flooring and repaint the walls. The clients also decided they wanted a hot tub outside, so Mr. Prince cut into the deck he had just built to accommodate it. Finally, they realized that the furniture they had bought didn't fit in two of the four bedrooms, so Mr. Prince ripped out the freshly painted sheetrock, reframed the closets and painted the walls a third time.

To some, it might seem a career step sideways - from an important post in the White House to the chairmanship of a small Federal agency facing deep budget cuts. But Frank Hodsoll, formerly Deputy Assistant to the President, campaigned vigorously for his new job as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. ''Nobody came along and offered it to me,'' says the 44-year-old lawyer and career government official. ''I asked for it, and I really had to sell myself.'' Though the Endowment is small as Federal agencies go, its chairmanship has high visibility. But Mr. Hodsoll smilingly denies he took the job for that reason. ''I've spent a whole career in 'invisible' posts, and haven't minded it a bit. No, I think the arts are terribly important, and I'd like to devote myself to a national effort in the arts to be done with great care and quality.'' The chairman's visibility is heightened these days by the fact that he must defend and ultimately carry out the budget cuts called for by the Reagan Administration. Ultimately, of course, the Congress will determine the Endowment's budget, but the Reagan Administration recently proposed reducing it from $143 million in fiscal 1982 to about $101 million for the next year.

''Political boss William Ward, who seems to have run Westchester on lines drawn up by the Pharaohs, was sitting on a park bench in Cleveland. He spied a 'Keep Off the Grass' sign. This annoyed him. He began to ponder how little grass there would be for Westchester County people to enjoy if a lot of land wasn't bought up quickly. On his return he set up the Westchester Park Commission and instructed it to buy up waste land. As to how it would be used, he said, they could worry about that later.'' From ''Urban Sprawl,'' an article published in Fortune magazine by William H. Whyte Jr. By SUZANNE DeCHILLO ABOUT 60 years and 15,000 acres later, the county is still worrying about the Ward legacy. This summer, in fact, some residents may find that their favorite county park has reduced hours or may even, in fact, be closed. Faced with budget cuts, the Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation, working with the six members of the Parks, Recreation and Conservation Board, is struggling to find a plan that ''will not abandon nor give away Westchester's parks,'' in the words of D'Vera Topol, chairman of the board.

NEWARK THE announcement by City Council President Earl Harris last week that he will oppose Mayor Kenneth A. Gibson in the May 11 election presents Mr. Gibson with his most formidible opponent since he unseated the late Hugh J. Addonizio in 1970. Mr. Harris, who has served as Council President for eight years, is an acknowledged vote-getter, winning election in 1974 and 1978 as an at-large candidate for the City Council on the first ballot, a feat not matched by other candidates in the crowded field. Mr. Harris garnered more than 29,000 votes in winning election in 1978, while Mayor Gibson was winning a third term with 68.4 percent of the 55,610 votes cast, or about 38,000 votes. In 1970, with Mr. Harris as a running mate on his ticket, Mr. Gibson, who was 37 years old at the time, wrested the mayoral office from Mr. Addonizio, who was facing trial on charges of plotting to extort $1.4 million from contractors doing business in the city.

CINCINNATI THE photographer, sitting in the living room of George Foster's home, wondered about settings for shots for the story he was assigned to. ''I didn't notice any baseball mementoes around the house - do you have a trophy room?'' he asked George and Sheila Foster, who were on the couch below a cleanly designed abstract painting. They looked at each other. ''The trophies are in the storage room,'' said Foster. Then he asked his wife, ''Do you know where the key is?'' ''I don't know where the key is,'' she said, after a moment. George rubbed his chin. ''I don't, either.'' ''We'd have to find the key,'' said Sheila, tentatively. Turning to the photographer, she said, ''We haven't been in there in about a year.''