What was going on when I was born?

A SAUSAGE factory has been turned into an office building, a stormwindow factory has been turned into a waterfront restaurant, a vaudeville theater has been restored to its former glory and a rundown shopping area has been brightened and renovated. These are some of the changes that were recognized by the Westchester Municipal Planning Federation in its annual awards, given earlier this month. The awards were presented to New Rochelle, Peekskill, Tarrytown and White Plains, with commendations given to Croton-on-Hudson and Greenburgh. All the awards this year went to projects that involved preservation -unlike previous years, when most awards were given for new developments and parks. This year they went for groups of buildings, neighborhood improvement and a golf course - St. Andrews in Hastings - that was facing financial collapse but was saved by a plan to build 209 condominiums priced at about $350,000 each on the edge of the course.

GREENWICH THE chairman's name is Ransom. No one, John S. Ransom said, has ever remarked on the irony. That seems a bit surprising, since Mr. Ransom is in the business of storing people's riches. He is the chairman, chief executive officer and co-owner of the Vault, a security vault that opened here last week. Mr. Ransom does not inquire as to what his customers store, but he expected that gold bullion and jewelry would figure prominently. Artworks, antiques and business records also are likely deposits, since the Vault has special climate-controlled rooms for each.

THERE'S a sign that hangs outside the trading room at Bear, Stearns & Company - a cavernous, darkened room populated by rumpled traders, jangling telephones and dozens of computerized screens that command the attention of all. The sign reads: ''Let's make nothing but money.'' And, indeed, that's just what Bear, Stearns, one of the few remaining private partnerships left on Wall Street, does best. By most accounts, it is one of the street's most profitable firms, and one of the scrappiest. Its partners boast of not having Harvard M.B.A.'s and, in some cases, of not even having graduated from college. But they do know how to make a dollar - often by taking on controversial deals that other firms sniff at, fearing their image might be tarnished. Bear, Stearns represented maverick financier Irwin Jacobs in his abortive takeover of Pabst Brewing, and even proposed his current assault on the Bekins Company, a moving van corporation. It represented dissident shareholders trying to oust management - something other firms won't do - at Global Natural Resources and Tosco, two energy companies. And, it has grabbed for publicity by making former Governor Hugh Carey a special limited partner and hiring New York Jets quarterback Richard Todd as a stockbroker.

PRESSING two children close to her, On Soon Whang bowed her head and began to cry. Then she gazed around the Dobbs Ferry living room filled with American parents and their adopted Korean children and said softly: ''I'm sorry for my tears, but this is a dream. I'm always thinking - how are the children? How are they doing, and how are they studying?'' The diminutive woman had flown halfway around the world to find out. Aware of her advancing age, the 81-year-old ''grandmother'' to several thousand Korean orphans had decided to visit some of these children in the United States.

A month after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission laid down the law at Indian Point, the agency seemed to turn that law on its ear, at least in the minds of some critics. Acknowledging that plans to evacuate nearly 300,000 persons living near the Westchester reactors were still flawed -the deficiency that prompted the May 5 threat to close the facility - the N.R.C. nevertheless decided last week to let the plants remain open because steps had been taken toward improvement. The 3 to 2 decision, one N.R.C. commissioner complained, made ''a mockery of our emergency-planning regulations.'' That was echoed by Ellyn R. Weiss, general counsel of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which asked the N.R.C. to close the complex in 1979. ''There will never be a more clear-cut case for enforcing the rules,'' she said. ''None of the commissioners even argued that there is preparedness today or will be in the future.'' But Nunzio J. Palladino, the chairman, said he voted with the majority because ''the necessary commitments have been made.'' Mr. Palladino added that he hoped a drill to test emergency preparations at the plants, which are 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan, would be held as soon as possible.

THE rich pie that developers, builders and speculators hoped to carve up among themselves when casino gambling came to Atlantic City five years ago has turned out to be more of a cupcake than a pie. There has been relatively little demand for housing outside Atlantic City itself, and plans for some of the grandiose projects have been scaled down. Despite this, environmentalists are concerned that the casinos will one day create demands for housing, roads, shopping malls and the like that will spell doom for some of the state's most fragile and sensitive environments. They fear that even scaled-down housing projects will strain water resources, overburden sewers and pollute the air, land and waterways of South Jersey. Since Resorts International became Atlantic City's first hotelcasino on Memorial Day weekend of 1978, about 34,200 new dwellings have been approved for construction or are under review by one of two state agencies that oversee the region's development. All the projects have 100 or more units and all are in or near woodlands or the coast.

Further Growth Revision? Another battle may be brewing over the Reagan Administration's economic forecast for 1983 - pitting, as usual,Martin S. Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, against some of the stronger growth advocates in the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Feldstein says that, based on data available now, he sees no reason that the official forecast of 4.7 percent growth from the fourth quarter of 1982 to the fourth quarter of 1983 ''will miss by much.'' He argues that it would take an average of 5.4 percent economic growth in the remaining three quarters of the year to achieve the 4.7 percent figure. He also says that 6 percent growth in the current quarter would not lead him to change his forecast. The flash figure for second-quarter growth of the gross national product will be available before the forecast is reviewed and prepared for release by mid-July.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz has expressed irritation with the French Government, saying ''it is aggravating'' to deal with France on allied matters because of ambiguity among the French about their role in the Atlantic alliance. Mr. Shultz, who rarely criticizes an ally publicly, made his comments to reporters aboard his plane Friday night as he flew back to Washington from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in Paris. The Secretary said the conclusion of the two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers was delayed for about three hours on Friday because of French ''sensitivity'' over words being used in the communique. ''You are constantly in the process of saying: 'The allies think such and such,' and then, the French say: 'We agree with that, so that's no problem, but that's something the unified command did and we can't touch that,' '' Mr. Shultz said.

Thanks largely to the ineptness of the opposition and the peculiarities of the British electoral system, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party won so big in Britain last week that historical comparisons were in order: the greatest sweep since Labor's Clement Attlee ousted Winston Churchill in 1945, the worst Labor defeat since 1922, the first Prime Minister since Lord Salisbury in 1900 to win two straight elections with margins big enough to guarantee full five-year terms. In the popular vote, the Tories did not do as well as 1979. Their 42 percent was down about a point. But the winner-take-all, singleseat constituency system gave them 397 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons and increased their majority from 33 to 144 over the combined opposition. Labor, with 28 percent of the popular vote - and 209 seats - lost almost seven points because of defections to the Social Democrats and a radical-sounding platform that turned off many voters. Most of the defectors did well, as did the Liberals, but the Alliance's popular vote (25.8 percent) was spread so widely that it could win only 23 seats, or less than 4 percent of the House.

George Greene is a Selden, L.I., developer who cut his homebuilding teeth on projects in the wide-open spaces of Nassau and Suffolk Counties. In central Queens, where Mr. Greene has been working for the last few years, vacant land is much harder to find, but that has not kept him from acquiring the property needed for his projects.

The following article is based on reporting by Edward B. Fiske and Samuel Weiss and was written by Mr. Fiske. New York City high school students are taking more academically rigorous courses than students took five years ago, according to an analysis of data provided by the Board of Education and the City University. An analysis by The New York Times of 600,000 transcripts indicates students are showing greater interest in college-preparatory courses in three of the five subject areas of the curriculum -mathematics, science and social studies. In English, the data show a slight increase in enrollment in the last five years. In the fifth area, foreign languages, enrollment dropped slightly.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dismissed Foreign Secretary Francis Pym tonight as part of a reorganization of her Cabinet at the start of her second term. Sir Geoffrey Howe, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer throughout Mrs. Thatcher's first four-year administration, was named as Mr. Pym's successor. Authoritative sources here said the Prime Minister had asked Mr. Pym, a moderate with whom she often quarreled, to move to another ministry to make way for a new appointee. When he refused, she demanded and received his resignation. If he is willing, he may now be made Speaker of the House of Commons, which would end the active political career of a man once thought a possible successor to Mrs. Thatcher.