What was going on when I was born?

Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, today rejected the notion that the economy faced the risk of a depression, a concern that has been expressed by a few economists. ''There are risks,'' he told the Senate Banking Committee, but ''I wouldn't characterize them as a depression.'' Mr. Volcker stuck with his forecast of a recovery later this year. ''There are all kinds of supporting factors in the economy of a very basic sort that seem to me do not justify that kind of analysis,'' he said of the proposition that the current recession, which began in July, carried with it the risk of a depression. 1982 Recovery Called Likely ''I think the probabilities are very strongly on the side of a recovery later this year,'' he told the committee. But then the chairman said, as he has in his five previous appearances on Capitol Hill this year, that the risk ahead was that large budget deficits would push up interest rates and either restrain the recovery or abort it.

The Salvadoran Army today abruptly ended one of its most ambitious offensives of the war, and the commander of the 2,000-man force conceded that a number of guerrilla encampments had resisted the 10-day assault. Troop transport trucks rushed the weary-looking Government soldiers down the road to the capital throughout the morning, and armor pieces that had been set up in the foothills of the volcanic slopes controlled by the rebels were wheeled back onto a soccer field here that has been converted into a military motor pool. Vultures circled where in past days smoke had risen above dry hillsides set ablaze by white phosphorous artillery markers. 'The Offensive Is Finished' ''The offensive is finished,'' said Col. Manuel Edmundo Palacios, standing in the doorway of the makeshift headquarters in a gabled two-story shop building downtown. A day earlier he had said that the operation would continue ''one, two or three more weeks, I don't know exactly.''

A news analysis article on Jan. 23 about the the tax-exempt status of church-related schools where theology requires racial discrimination incorrectly quoted a brief concerning Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. The brief said, ''An Orthodox Jewish congregation may not be required by the state to open its membership to Baptists.''

DAWN didn't crack one recent frigid Saturday - it peeped briefly through the clouds and went back to bed. The dozen bird watchers huddled on Long Island's easternmost tip were not so lazy. Up since 5:45 A.M., they continued to scan the frigid Atlantic from their windswept perch at the foot of the Montauk Point lighthouse. ''No one has ever really proved that there are more birds here at dawn,'' said the birders' leader, Robert O. Paxton. ''It's just that Puritan feeling that if you get up early, your virtue will be rewarded.''

International Salvadoran rebels are controlled from abroad, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said in House testimony. He said the United States had ''overwhelming and irrefutable'' evidence that the insurgency was not an autonomous Salvadoran operation, as the rebels contend. (Page A1, Column 1.) A setback for the Salvadoran Army was confirmed. The Government troops abruptly ended one of their most ambitious offensives of the war, and the commander of the 2,000-member force acknowledged that a number of rebel encampments had resisted the 10-day assault. (A1:1.)

''We have a saying out West: It's good to be among friends, even if they aren't your own.'' - Education Secretary T.H. Bell. (A21:1.)

He was a small-time robber from the Lower East Side, but Kenny Spulka had little fear of the police. They were, he said, simply ''pests.'' As the 19-year-old mugger talked in the state prison in Coxsackie, N.Y., about his life and crimes, he described the criminal-justice system as though it were little more than an annoying inconvenience. From the time he was a child stealing other children's bicycles, Kenny's life was entwined with the Ninth Precinct police, who chased him, questioned him, arrested him and even bought him coffee and offered books and advice. But through it all - the police warnings, the calls to his parents, the trips to Family Court - Kenny remained a robber, and he was never really punished until his prison sentence last year. As so often happens, Kenny and the neighborhood police began to share not only the same streets but also the same language, and the same understanding of their life together. ''Sometimes they would chase me and apprehend me, but the cops can't do much to you,'' Kenny said. ''They was pests. Always picking up kids, asking questions.''

House Republicans as well as Democrats made it clear to the White House today that they opposed sharp reductions in college loans and many other education programs. ''It's a brand new ball game this year,'' said Representative William Goodling, Republican of Pennsylvania, a former school principal and superintendent. He predicted that Congress would restore most of $3 billion slated to be cut from education in the President's budget proposals for the fiscal year 1983, which begins Oct. 1. Under the Reagan budget, $10 billion would be spent on all Federal education programs, down from $13 billion in 1982.

The Atlantic Richfield Company, convinced that price has become more important to gasoline buyers than service, said today that it will stop accepting purchases on its credit cards on April 15. Arco, with 3 million accounts, ranks seventh among the nation's gasoline purveyors in number of credit card accounts. Amoco, with 7 million accounts, and Exxon, with 6.5 million, head the list. In doing away with credit card sales, the nation's eighth-largest gasoline retailer said it will be able to cut its wholesale price to distributors and dealers by nearly 3 cents a gallon. That is the amount that the company said its 3 million credit cards have been costing to service.

The effort to find merger partners for failing savings banks has been hindered by a behind-the-scenes battle between Muriel Siebert, the New York State Superintendent of Banks, and William M. Isaac, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Miss Siebert is seeking a bigger role for the state banking department in the F.D.I.C.'s attempts to merge failing statechartered savings banks into stronger institutions. She contends that the local authorities understand much better the state's banking needs than do Federal authorities. Although Miss Siebert is in the forefront of the battle because of the large number of troubled savings banks in New York, the banking authorities in other states have similar concerns, and also have been struggling with the F.D.I.C. The states have coordinated their efforts through the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, a trade group of state banking authorities.

Britain reduced the price of its North Sea oil by $4 a barrel, to $31 a barrel, its second cut in a month. The move put sharp downward pressure on world oil prices, analysts said, making a major break in oil prices likely. (Page A1.) Atlantic Richfield will stop accepting credit card purchases on April 15. With the savings, the company said, it will be able to cut its wholesale price to distributors and dealers by nearly 3 cents. Arco said price means more to gasoline purchasers now than service. (D1.)

MORE than 175 million pounds of fish pass each year through the barnlike structures of the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan, making it the largest central clearing house for fish in the country. According to an official of the Fishery Council, the public relations arm of the market, most of this fish is consumed within the New York metropolitan area. Going from stall to stall in the glare of bare electric bulbs early on a bone-chilling morning, one can see an astonishing array of fish - rosy red snappers and shimmering pompano from Florida, sleek mackerel with their distinctive mottlings, huge sections of mako shark and swordfish with skins like suede, boxes of tiny whitebait and silvery smelts, golden spotted cod, snowy halibut, dappled weakfish and salmon and charcoal-gray sea bass. Croaker, monkfish, skate wings and sand shark, among the less-common varieties, also seem plentiful. Lining the other side of South Street are the shellfish specialists and the filleting houses. Long-distance trucking, which has replaced the more romantic but less efficient boat as the means of transporting a large volume of fish to the central market, has made this variety possible. The city's diverse population, with ethnic groups whose menus regularly include mullet, conch, eel and sea urchins, insists on it.