What was going on when I was born?

It isn't 1947 here, but it might as well be. Extras stroll through Rockaway's Playland in vintage summer clothes, the women wearing impeccable 40's makeup and hairdos. ''Hey, sailor, I got a dame for you,'' jokes one gray-haired extra to another, who's in uniform. Little girls in ringlets play catch for the camera, then slip anachronistically into down jackets between takes, since the morning is chilly. Children who seem to have stepped out of old photographs are coddled by moms in 1982 running clothes. They are gathered here for the filming of ''Sophie's Choice,'' the best-selling novel by William Styron that is now being adapted for the screen by Alan Pakula. Mr. Pakula, writer and director of the film version of ''Sophie's Choice,'' scheduled to open in December, maintains that there are two sorts of books that can become movies: ''One is a book that has an interesting idea, but you feel the book itself is not a film, so you change it until it becomes one. The other is a book that must in some way be translated. If you translate successfully, the movie will have the life and soul of the book, and the core of the same emotional experience. People will think they're seeing the book on the screen.''

LOS ANGELES Last spring, Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment, was feeling desparate. It was nearly time to announce the network's prime-time schedule for the fall and the pieces just weren't falling into place. ''I was running around to Rock Hudson's house trying to persaude him to do a series,'' Mr. Tartikoff remembers, ''then to Gabe Kaplan's to get a script finished for his series, and then to James Garner's place to try to talk him into doing a new series based on his 'Maverick' character.'' Mr. Tartikoff finally succeeded in all three missions, but it proved to be an empty victory. Shortly before filming was to begin on the Rock Hudson series, Mr. Hudson suffered a heart attack. The series starring Mr. Garner as Brett Maverick and Mr. Kaplan in ''Lewis and Clark'' failed in the ratings, and neither one is on next fall's schedule.

STAMFORD THE fate of a proposed Center for the Performing Arts in Stamford could be decided this week when the city's Board of Representatives votes on a $500,000 bonding proposal for the center. If the 40-member board rejects the bonding proposal, the state will withdraw its contribution to the $5 million center, putting its eventual construction in jeopardy. But if the panel adopts the financing plan, proponents of the center hope it will signal a resurgence of cultural activity in the area. The complex has been planned around the Hartman Theater on Atlantic Street, and would be shared by the Hartman Theater Company, the Stamford State Opera Company, the Stamford Symphony and other cultural groups.

BRIDGEPORT ROCKING her granddaughter on her shoulder, Phoukhao Sylaphet yawns. It is 3 P.M. and the sun floods the room. But it is midnight to her body, which still abides by the time zone of a refugee camp in the Philippines. Two days earlier, Mrs. Sylaphet lived there. When she, her daughter-in-law, Phetmany Sylaphet, 21 years old, and the 11-month-old child, Phetsavann, arrived in this city on April 28, an end finally came to the seven-year odyssey of the Laotian family.

Three Queens men were slain and a Long Island man was critically wounded early yesterday in a fusillade of shotgun blasts and pistol fire that erupted on a street near Kennedy International Airport in Queens, the police said. Several assailants, who the police said may have been organizedcrime gunmen, escaped in one or more cars. The motive for the attack was not immediately known, though robbery and drugs were apparently not involved, detectives said. The victims, a father, his son and two other men, apparently were lured to the scene of the shootings, on 156th Avenue near Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach, about a half mile west of the airport and the grounds of Aqueduct Race Track.

A New Jersey industrialist who died five years ago will bestow a sizable sum on the Borough of Mendham in southwestern Morris County on Saturday when Three Fields, his 49-acre estate, will be sold at public auction. The estate belonged to Andrew Fletcher, president and chairman of the St. Joseph Lead Company until his retirement in 1967.

After months of infighting, the Legislature's Democratic and Republican leaders said today that they had reached agreement on a reapportionment plan that will eliminate five Congressional seats and endanger some Democratic State Senators and Republican Assemblymen. Bipartisan bills with the new Congressional and Legislative district lines are expected to come to a vote this week, with some details still under negotiation to be handled in amendments, staff members said. The plans for the House of Representatives and the State Senate and Assembly all reflect a transfer of political power away from New York City, which was found in the 1980 census to have lost more than 10 percent of its population. Nassau and Westchester Counties will also see their representation diluted, as will the city of Buffalo. The losses for those areas were the gains of Suffolk, Rockland, Orange and Putnam Counties and of rural areas across the state.

AMERICA IN SEARCH OF ITSELF The Making of the President, 1956-80. By Theodore H. White. 465 pp. New York: A Cornelia & Michael Bessie Book. Harper & Row. $15.95. Theodore H. White has had a long and prosperous life as one of America's most celebrated political writers despite being afflicted with an incurable case of sentimentality. The worst side effect of the disease is that its victims are subject to terrible highs and lows. When Mr. White launched his ''Making of the President'' series with the election of John Kennedy, he was very high. In recent years, however, his spirits have hit bottom, and now, feeling frustrated and inadequate to the task, he declares that this book will be ''my last story of an election.''

MR. ROCKEFELLER was right. Although we pay homage to Jeffersonian democracy, Americans have built an economy that relies on goliaths to get the job done. And the biggest of all is Exxon, the most prominent descendant of the vast empire that John D. Rockefeller, who made no bones about the end of individualism, put together piece by piece. The Exxon Corporation, the world's largest industrial company, shuffles billions of dollars like pocket change. Its decisions shape nations and shake governments. Consider the Colony project, a $5 billion oil shale development in the Colorado high plains. Until a week ago, it was the centerpiece of United States involvement in synthetic fuel; it was also an undertaking where Exxon, paying its own way, was a kind of equal partner with Washington, to whom lesser companies looked for financial help. Last weekend, Exxon withdrew from the venture, and last week, 2,000 workers got their last paychecks; 1,000 more were on their way out. A new town died and, practically unnoticed, a $100 million pipeline project to ship the shale oil was shelved.

National Historic Preservation Week begins today and 3,000 events are planned across the country to mark it. But in New York City, where preservation is a hotly debated topic, the celebration will be definitely low-key.

CANAAN ''I NEVER wanted this to become an emotional issue,'' said Henry E. Pozzetta, the soft-spoken, 58-year-old funeral director who was elected Canaan's First Selectman last November. But when Mr. Pozzetta declared a moratorium on issuing pistol permits early last month, he became both the target of harsh criticism from sportsmen and gun dealers and the recipient of letters and calls applauding his actions. Members of the Canaan-based Northwest Connecticut Rod and Gun Club reacted to the moratorium with ''shock, anger and concern,'' said Fred Currier, the club's president. A Bridgeport gun dealer accused Mr. Pozzetta of being ''a dictator,'' the First Selectman said. Mr. Pozzetta said he stopped signing the local permits after being ''conscience-stricken'' by a report about a young woman in Pittsfield, Mass., who fatally shot her two children, then killed herself. One of the letters of support Mr. Pozzetta received was from the father of the Pittsfield woman, he added. The woman had reportedly given false information about her mental health history on the application for a pistol permit in Massachusetts, and had been allowed to purchase a handgun.

SINCE 1898, when Samuel Longstreth Parrish opened a museum in Southampton devoted to his personal art collection, the cultural life of Long Island has been significantly enriched through the generosity of its resident collectors. Whether as trustees of and donors to its institutions, lenders to its exhibitions or patrons of its artists, they have played a decisive role in shaping popular taste, stimulating artistic activity and establishing the region as one of the nation's foremost art centers. Three Long Island museums - the Parrish, the Heckscher (founded in 1920 by the collector August Heckscher) and the Nassau County Museum of Fine Art (founded in 1975) - have been celebrating this fact in exhibitions devoted to works from some of the Island's numerous distinguished collections. No one has yet tried to total the number of collectors who are full-time or part-time residents here, and it is probably impossible to arrive at a definitive figure. Many, for the sake of privacy and security, prefer to remain anonymous. Yet this does not always deter them from sharing their treasures with the public.