What was going on when I was born?

From across the East River, Long Island City looks like the industrial center it has been for more than a century, a place where bread is baked, steel is welded and cloth is sewn. Within its borders are more than 500 factories. Train tracks and highways, carrying thousands to and from Manhattan each day, thread their way through the blackened smokestacks that rise above the Queens waterfront. Yet there is something behind and between the factories that commuters rarely see: a proud neighborhood of historic Italianate homes, fine restaurants and quiet parks. Long Island City has also recently emerged as a proving ground for young artists; there is a well-known if eclectic art gallery there. And if all goes as planned, the community will soon be an international entertainment center.

Quotation of the Day ''With our beloved nation at peace, we are in the midst of a springtime of hope for America.

For over a week, the financial affairs of Geraldine A. Ferraro, the Democratic candidate for Vice President, and John A. Zaccaro, her husband, have been under intense scrutiny by the nation's news media. The story has been reported with repeated front-page articles in newspapers and generous time from network television news shows. But bubbling beneath the surface of the story is a difficult question that promises to emerge as an issue of public debate and is already being discussed internally by people in the news business: Has the nation's press been fair to Representative Ferraro? Specifically, is the inquiry into the finances of the Congresswoman and her husband an important news story that has been handled properly, or has the coverage of the story, even if it is a legitimate one, been unduly aggressive and overblown? For the press, coverage of the first woman to become a major party's Vice-Presidential nominee and her husband has meant moving through uncharted waters requiring new judgment calls.

The Long Island Lighting Company said yesterday that it had struck a deal with 14 banks to get enough cash to keep out of bankruptcy through early next year, but that the deal required it to stop paying dividends on preferred stock. The banks, led by Citibank, the Chemical Bank and the Chase Manhattan Bank, will provide $150 million in new credit now and may add $50 million later, the utility said. Lilco faces a $90 million bill on Sept. 1 for repayment of bonds. Before the new loans, it had only $70 million on hand for the payment and was considering filing under the Federal bankruptcy law. Shoreham Plant Problems The company faces an additional $15 million bond repayment in December, as well as other expenses that it was afraid it could not meet without new sources of credit because of problems in opening its Shoreham nuclear power plant.

President Reagan, accepting the Republican nomination for a second term, appealed tonight for the party's help in finishing the ''unfinished agenda'' of a conservative reformation of the Government. Mr. Reagan told the delegates to the Republican National Convention that Speech transcripts, pages A12-13. the contest between himself and Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic Presidential nominee, presented the nation's voters ''with the clearest political choice of half a century.'' Historic Vote Foreseen Mr. Reagan's running mate, Vice President Bush, described the 1984 election as a historic dividing line in American politics. By winning election to a second term, the Vice President said in his acceptance speech, he and Mr. Reagan would establish the Republicans as ''the party of the future.'' Aides to Mr. Reagan say they do not see how he can lose in November, but they want to avoid the pitfalls of complacency. (News analysis, page A11.)

George and Ruth Sherwood started collecting kerosene lamps in 1949. By 1981, they had so many (more than 500) that they did what any self-respecting overcollector does - they opened a museum. P. T. Barnum knew that the end was going to come some day, even for him. And lest anyone forget just who he was, he made provisions for a little reminder - a three-story Romanesque institute known today as the P. T. Barnum Museum. Wentworth T. Phillips's father, a blacksmith, couldn't read and didn't know how to use some of the instruments of his trade. The father made his son promise that one day he would assemble all the implements and teach children how to use them. The result? The Farm Implement Museum.

Friday FERRY DANCERS To the bewilderment of unsuspecting commuters, dancers will parade among the benches of a Staten Island ferry and perform on its decks tonight and tomorrow. The occasion will be ''Dance on Water,'' a floating festival of works designed for the ferry. Appearing with their troupes will be the choreographers Elise Bernhardt, Elise Long, Charles Moulton, Marta Renzi, Barbara Roan and Clive Thompson. Tonight's performances begin from the Manhattan side at 6:30, 7:30 and 8:30; tomorrow's at 3, 4 and 5. Return trips leave Staten Island a half-hour after Manhattan departures. Fare: 25 cents, round trip. CELEBRITIES' DOODLES Olivia de Havilland painted a bouquet, Ian McKellen sketched Shakespeare, Christopher Plummer drew a writer having a block, and Tom Stoppard, explaining that he really can't draw, offered a 3-year-old's vision, with what he labeled ''my hous.'' They are some of the more than 20 celebrities whose doodles, drawings and designs will be auctioned to benefit the New Dramatists, a support organization for playwrights. The products of their labor are on display, free, through Sept. 10 in the Alfred Dunhill store at 620 Fifth Avenue, at 50th Street, where sealed bids can be made. ORIGINAL 'ORFEO'

Roscoe Dye, a 47-year-old auto worker, spent part of his day recently trying to assemble a truck. He was not working with steel, but with building blocks from a children's toy called Lego. It was one of many tests Mr. Dye had to pass in a four-day screening process before he was hired by Nummi, which is more formally known as New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., the company born of General Motors' and Toyota's joint venture here. In the Lego exercise, said D. William Childs, Nummi's general manager of human resources, one person tells another how to assemble a truck, but the instructor is not allowed to use his hands. The purpose is to see how well applicants work together, to measure their creativity and to evaluate their leadership abilities.

Governor Cuomo has been touring the state this summer with an energy that most politicians reserve for their election campaigns. At least once a week, sometimes twice, Mr. Cuomo has boarded a state helicopter or plane and headed for some corner of the state, where he roars through a day of shaking hands, visiting state facilities, talking to local journalists and meeting with local politicians. ''I've set a record for state fairs,'' he said. On Wednesday, for example, Mr. Cuomo visited the Dutchess County Fair, second largest in the state, as part of a seven-hour swing through Dutchess County. This trip down the Hudson Valley was, according to his aides, typical of those he has been taking all summer to such places as Plattsburgh, Dunkirk, Utica, Cooperstown, Jamestown and Rochester.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger made public today a panel's recommendations to provide access to military operations for news organizations, and he gave orders to put the recommendations into effect. But Mr. Weinberger made it clear that military security would remain the paramount consideration in guidelines for news coverage. The panel, composed of officers and journalists, was headed by Maj. Gen. Winant Sidle, a retired chief of information for the Army. It was convened after the United States invasion of Grenada in October 1983.

Scientists have found that large molecules remain intact in frozen human brains for years after death and, by studying such molecules, have discovered a basic biological abnormality in senile brains destroyed by Alzheimer's disease. A report in today's issue of the journal Science by the two principle researchers, Dr. Charles A. Marotta and Dr. Elizabeth M. Sajdel-Sulkowska of the Harvard Medical School in Boston and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., described laboratory conditions under which large molecules will make protein as if in a living brain. Dr. Marotta suggested in an interview yesterday that the technique of analyzing cells from long-frozen brains and studying molecular mechanisms that have gone awry might open up important new areas of investigation for other diseases whose causes are not known. Experts at the National Institute on Aging, which financed much of Dr. Marotta's research, said the discovery of the biologic brain defect was an important step in the search for the cause, treatment and prevention of Alzheimer's disease. Millions of people throughout the world have Alzheimer's disease, which is related to more than 100,000 deaths each year in the United States. The disease, named for Dr. Alois Alzheimer, who described it 70 years ago, causes loss of memory and confusion and may eventually prevent the victims from taking proper care of themselves.

John A. Zaccaro obtained postponement of a June hearing on his handling of an elderly woman's estate so the matter would not ''interfere'' with the Democratic National Convention, which subsequently chose his wife as the Vice-Presidential nominee, a court referee said yesterday. The referee, Jonathan A. Weinstein, said after yesterday's rescheduled hearing that Mr. Zaccaro and his lawyer had ''moved to postpone'' the hearing from June 28 because ''they didn't want to interfere with the convention.'' Mr. Zaccaro's wife, Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro, was nominated at the convention July 19 as Walter F. Mondale's running mate. Mr. Weinstein said he had suggested that if the hearing were held in June as scheduled the matter would ''blow over'' but that he had consented to the postponement. Mr. Weinstein made his remarks after Mr. Zaccaro, at the hearing yesterday in State Supreme Court in Queens, defended his conduct as court-appointed conservator of the estate. Mr. Zaccaro testified that in borrowing $175,000 from the estate for his business, ''I felt that I was doing the right thing at the time with the estate and I still do.''