What was going on when I was born?

TO help acquaint city and suburban folk with the importance of dairy and crop farming, nine farms in six counties will hold open houses from 1 to 5 P.M. Saturday and next Sunday. The event is sponsored by the Connecticut Farm Bureau. State agriculture officials hope that saving the state's farms from development might be an easier task if the public knows more about that sector of Connecticut's economy. Visitors will be invited to tour milking parlors, pick strawberries, watch quarter horses go through their paces, take hayrides through the fields and drink free milkshakes.

''There is a real effort not to muck up the investigation with White House fingerprints,'' an Administration official said last week, explaining why President Reagan had been keeping his distance from the mounting controversy over the purloined Carter campaign papers. But by Friday, Mr. Reagan told senior aides that he wanted ''to get to the bottom'' of the affair, initially shrugged off by the White House as a little midsummer media madness and now the focus of separate inquiries by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Congressional subcommittee. And given growing Republican concerns about the effects of the investigation on the 1984 election, it seemed likely the President would soon have to get much more directly involved in the tangle of questions over how during the 1980 campaign his closest advisers obtained political plans and other documents, some of them perhaps classified, from the Carter White House, and whether Mr. Reagan in fact knew about them.

THE harsh glare of the television lights filled the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room as a senator shot questions at David M. Roderick, chairman of the United States Steel Corporation. The audience was spellbound and two other chairmen of major steel companies listened from front row seats. In a voice that cut through the hushed chamber, Mr. Roderick took to the defense - explaining why his company made the controversial decision to import steel slabs from Britain instead of making them here. Once again, David Roderick was in the hot seat. Last year, the 58-year old chief executive stunned the world by paying $6 billion for the Marathon Oil Company - an audacious move for someone who had just lobbied in Washington for corporate tax breaks to free up money for steel and other outmoded basic industries. This left many politicans feeling taken - ''We go out on a limb in Congress and we feel they should be putting it in steel,'' complained Arlen Specter, a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania - and raised questions about the company's long-range committment to steel.

millimeter guns, the state swapped aging .357 Magnums and promised the cooperation of the state police in the advertising campaign of Beretta-U.S.A., the United States subsidiary of an Italian gun manufacturer. The award has drawn fire from Smith & Wesson, a division of the Bangor Punta Corporation of Greenwich, which lost out to Beretta-U.S.A. for the order. Smith & Wesson has filed a complaint with Joseph P. McLoughlin, the Acting State Commissioner of Claims, charging that the state bidding law does not allow the sale of endorsements or advertising services. Smith & Wesson also charged that the state should not take part in the ''misleading advertising campaign, inasmuch as the public will not be aware of the circumstances under which the state police came to purchase and use the Beretta pistol and the fact that the state police endorsements are not gratuitous.''

NEW York City's housing stock changed dramatically in the 1970's, largely in response to equally dramatic shifts in the c ity's households and population. The contrasts were striking: In M anhattan, where growth was rapid, scores of factories and w arehouses were transformed into lofts and apartments, while the B ronx and Brooklyn led the nation's counties in housing units lost toa bandonment and demolition. The average size of households in the city continued to decline, as it did throughout the nation. But the 1980 census figure for household size in Manhattan - 1.96 persons - was the lowest in the nation, and each of the other boroughs except Staten Island also was below the national average of 2.75. The trend toward living alone also intensified over the last decade, and demographers cite three principal reasons: Young adults are marrying later in life, the rising divorce rate often leaves each partner living alone, and increasing numbers of the elderly are staying in their own housing units by themselves -often because they can afford no alternative.

DISRAELI. By Sarah Bradford. Illustrated. 432 pp. New York: Stein & Day. $19.95. BENJAMIN DISRAELI is endlessly fascinating, and that in itself is enough justification for another biography of the man many believe was the greatest British Prime Minister in the 19th century and possibly in the entire history of England. He was a dramatic leader who exulted in the greatness of his country. His administrations pursued an aggressive policy in trying to deal with social concerns at home, and abroad he played to the hilt England's position as the most powerful country in the world.

A new antirobbery operation in New York City that has resulted in a large increase in arrests will soon be expanded to 14 other police precincts, including the two that cover much of the midtown area. The operation, known as the Robbery Identification Program, began in December 1981. The expansion will start in August, police officials said last week, and when it is completed in October it will be in effect in 23 of the city's 73 precincts. Those 23 precincts recorded about half of the nearly 96,000 reported robberies in the city last year, according to James T. Sullivan, the chief of detectives.

In Los Angeles most people are blase about celebrities. After all, it's not uncommon to spot a star banking at the automatic teller, buying ice cream or working out at the next Nautilus machine. But a few stars still have the power to make the natives restless. Even jaded Angelenos gawk at John Travolta as he dines at one of the city's popular new side-walk cafes. One well-dressed matron approaches him nervously and gushes, "I just want to tell you that I really enjoy your work. And you're just as beautiful in person!" Mr. Travolta flashes his famous, dazzling smile -- he has the whitest teeth since Burt Lancaster in his youth -- and kisses the startled fan. After she leaves, he exclaims, "That's my favorite kind of encounter. As long as it's genuine, I eat it up." With another actor such enthusiasm might seem feigned, but at 29 Mr. Travolta still seems slightly wonderstruck by his fame, and his high spirits are contagious. In the past he's been accused of being temperamental, and he's certainly had ups and downs in his career that might prompt irrational behavior. But now, as he awaits the release of "Staying Alive" -- the sequel to his 1977 blockbuster, "Saturday Night Fever" that opens in New York on Friday at the Ziegfeld -- he seems surprisingly relaxed and perfectly contented.

BILL HANNERS remembers the old days, when he and Art Schlichter, his best friend since grade school, used to hang aroundt he race tracks near their homes in central Ohio. It was fun back t hen in those innocent days of youth. Both of their families owned a nd raced horses, making it only natural that they spent much of t heir after-school hours learning the nuances of the sport. The f amilies were so close that a few years ago, Hanners and Mila S chlichter, Art's mother, bought a pacer together, Phantom Bret, who h as since been sold. Later, when the boys attended Miami Trace High School and became stars on the football team - Art, the quarterback; Bill, his trusted wide receiver - they visited the track ''once or twice a week,'' as Bill recalled recently, and usually they bet. That the legal betting age in Ohio is 18 was never a problem. ''My mom would bet for us,'' Hanners said. After their 18th birthdays, they bet for themselves, the only difference being that Schlichter usually had more money to invest. ''If I had $10 to bet, it seems like he would have $50,'' said Hanners, who is now a horse trainer in Ohio. ''But I don't know if he ever won big.''

WHEN it was completed in 1958, the Greenwich-Killingly Expressway was hailed as the solution to Connecticut's highway problems. It was to relieve the traffic jams on the Post Road along the shoreline and open up access to the remote areas of eastern Connecticut. A quarter-century later, the expressway, now called the Connecticut Turnpike or I-95, has become the symbol, rather than the solution, of the state's highway problems. While its 120 miles of concrete and asphalt constitute less than 3 percent of the state highway system, the turnpike so far this year has been Connecticut's path to problems.

Even though Federal authorities cannot confirm the claim, Staten Island officials have long believed their Todt Hill at 409.8 feet to be the highest point on the Atlantic Coast between Maine and Key West, Fla. One Todt Hill couple, Sydney and Frances Crohl, were impressed by both the hill's presumed credentials and by a stunning view from its summit when they bought 1.25 acres there 30 years ago.

HOBOKEN IN 1954, when Marlon Brando was prowling the Fifth Street pier here during the filming of ''On the Waterfront,'' the city's docks were alive with cargo and passenger ships. Almost 30 years later, those once-busy docks are a virtual marine ghost town, with some of the piers so dilapidated that they have been condemned. And as the docks declined, so did the fortunes of Hoboken. In an effort to revive the city, Hoboken officials are planning a $500 million marina and building complex that would rehabilitate much of the waterfront. However, the project has encountered a major stumbling block, even though agreement between New York State, New Jersey and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had nearly been reached.