What was going on when I was born?

The White House released sheafs of information today from President Reagan's 1980 campaign files indicating that Reagan advisers had repeated, secret access to strategy material prepared for President Carter, including debating tactics and other campaign plans. President Reagan said tonight at his news conference that he ''never saw anything of the kind'' in the campaign. ''It seems strange to me that, since I was the debater, no one on our side ever mentioned to me anything of this kind,'' he said, suggesting the materials might have come from a ''disgruntled worker in the Carter campaign.'' He indicated that the Democrats were now pursuing ''political'' motives in demanding an investigation of how his campaign aides obtained the material. A Battery of Questions The President answered a battery of questions about the surreptitious use of the Carter material in his 18th formal Presidential news conference. He also said, with a broad smile, that he found ''profound wisdom'' in the observation of House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. that even without the secret material Mr. Reagan would have defeated President Carter.

A New York State agency has dropped its requirement that a group of landmark Harlem brownstones be renovated to restore and preserve their interiors. The agency said there was nothing left to preserve. The decision will permit the city to proceed with a more than fouryear-old plan to repair the 12 buildings and sell them to neighborhood residents.

An article in Metropolitan Report on Saturday about the shooting of three students near Yeshiva University misidentified a Jewish organization and its role in offering a reward. It is the American Jewish Committee, which has pledged to raise $10,000 in reward money.

An article in Metropolitan Report on Saturday about New York City's Financial Control Board misidentified Thomas P. Puccio. He is no longer a member of the law firm of Booth, Lipton & Lipton.

BACK in 1976 New York City went dry, figuratively speaking, as far as local brews were concerned. That's when the F & M Schaefer Brewing Company capped its last keg of beer in New York and joined such late and lamented local breweries as Ebling, Koster & Bial, Trommer's, Ringler, Henry Elias, Jetter and John Eichler. At 32, Matthew Reich is too young to have tasted most of those oldtime brews produced by German, Scottish and Irish immigrants, but he's nostalgic nonetheless. With a little luck, he says, he will revive the grand tradition and bring back local beer to a city that once boasted 121 breweries. ''People should drink locally brewed beer, it's a simple as that,'' Mr. Reich said, sitting in a cramped, stuffy office above a former chicken warehouse near the Hudson River in Greenwich Village.

Two fundamental changes seem to be lending urgency to the North American debate about acid rain. One is that falling acids and the toxic metals associated with them are increasingly seen by scientists and public officials as a threat to people, not just to fish and forests. The other is that there are multiple signs in Washington that the question is no longer whether government should act, but rather what it should do. The Reagan Administration's position has been that not enough is known about the source of acid rain to justify an expensive program of controls on power plants and other industries. Many scientists believe it is the sulfur dioxides and nitrous oxides emitted from the tall stacks of coal-burning plants, often carried long distances by the wind, that fall as acid rain and snow or in a dry state, and, at high levels, form the acid-laden clouds and mists that bathe the mountain forests.

The Rev. John Clermont, who was scheduled to say the 11 A.M. mass at Our Lady Chapel at St. Patrick's Cathedral, walked over to the register yesterday morning to see for whom the mass was being offered. The schedule said: Richard Plantagenet. ''Gosh,'' said Father Clermont. ''I'd better find out something about this.'' It was indeed the very Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester and member of the house of York, who became King Richard III. The occasion was the 500th anniversary of Richard's accession to the English throne.

Lenox Inc., after weeks of opposition, yesterday agreed to a takeover by the Brown-Forman Distillers Corporation after the distiller raised its bid by $3 a share. ''Lenox's board has unanimously recommended that Lenox shareholders accept the new offer,'' said John S. Chamberlin, Lenox's chairman, in a statement. An agreement was negotiated after Brown-Forman, following meetings with Lenox officials, agreed to increase its offer to what amounts to $90 a share, from $87, for all of Lenox's outstanding stock. The new bid was worth about $427 million for Lenox's more than 4.5 million outstanding shares.

International Some U.S. sanctions would be lifted if Polish authorities permitted a revival of free trade unions, President Reagan said. Earlier, Administration officials said Poland had been informed that once the authorities took ''meaningful steps'' to liberalize conditions the United States would begin lifting the sanctions imposed when martial law took effect in Poland in December 1981. (Page A1, Column 5.) Palestinian rebel forces opposed to Yasir Arafat attacked his loyalists in what appeared to be the start of an attempt to take control of all Palestinian forces in Lebanon. The Palestinian press service, which is loyal to Mr. Arafat, said the rebels had killed 15 loyalists and wounded 20. (A1:4-6.)

The stock market experienced its biggest decline in nearly two months as concern over rising interest rates continued to spread among investors. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 20.24 points, to 1,209.23. The decline was broadly based, with declines outnumbering advances by more than 4 to 1. (Page D1.) Bond prices edged higher, eliminating about half of Monday's losses. (D14.) The dollar was mixed in foreign currency trading, while gold prices fell $1.25 an ounce, to $414, in New York. (D16.) Futures prices for frozen pork bellies declined sharply. (D16.)

A FEW years ago it would have taken a mycologist to positively identify the wild mushrooms that now confront shoppers in virtually every specialty food store and vegetable market. In truth, of course, a few years ago only a mycologist would have cared. That was before wild mushrooms had been ''discovered'' by many American cooks, who have now had ample opportunity to sample the culinary riches of morels, enokitake (or enoki) mushrooms, chanterelles, porcini, cepes, pleurotes, Black Forest mushrooms and, predominantly, shiitake mushrooms. The shiitake - the name is pronounced she-TAH-keh - is a large, dark, wide-capped mushroom that, when cooked, has a full-bodied taste that many people have likened to that of steak. Shiitakes have a variety of uses; they can be broiled, grilled or sauteed, blended in sauces or served with spaghetti. And they have far more character than the cultivated white mushrooms usually found in supermarkets. A sure signal that shiitakes have ''arrived'' on the culinary scene can be found in scanning the menus of the finer restaurants in New York, where they turn up under several names, including oak mushrooms and porcini, the latter being the fabled wild Italian mushrooms that have a similar taste. Over the past few weeks Pierre Franey and I have experimented in the kitchen with a number of wild mushrooms, some dried or reconstituted. I also spent a day on a farm in southern Virginia where shiitakes are grown.

President Reagan, declaring that the American economy was ''beginning to sparkle,'' announced tonight at a news conference that his Administration was ''revising upward our projection of this year's economic growth from 4.7 to 5.5 percent.'' Martin S. Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said later that the President was discussing economic growth in terms of his Administration's usual final-quarter-to-final-quarter comparisons of gross national product. Such an increase would reduce the projected $190 billion deficit for the fiscal year 1984 by $10 billion to $15 billion, Mr. Feldman said in a telephone interview. He said the President's shift meant an increase in the growth projection to 4.5 percent from 4 percent in the fiscal year 1985, creating another deficit reduction of the same magnitude. Changes in Growth Estimate The change in the growth estimate marked the second time in two months that the Administration had moved to a more optimistic posture on the economy.