What was going on when I was born?

International OPEC agreed to cut its production ceiling by 1.5 million barrels a day, to 16 million. But the producers' group, meeting in an emergency session in Geneva, has failed so far to solve the knotty problem of distributing the cuts. Analysts expressed skepticism that the move would represent a real decrease from current output. And when demand rises, they said, it is unclear that OPEC members could stick to the lower quotas without cheating. Some traders accused the group of trying to prop up prices with rhetoric. (Page A1.) The Economy The F.C.C. reached agreement with state regulators to halve the access fee for residential telephone service, according to regulatory and Congressional sources. The fee, which would be reduced to $1 a month, has been criticized as a way of shifting telephone costs from businesses to households. (D1.)

The President's Commission on Organized Crime last week treated the galleries to the melodrama of which gangster B movies are made. Its hearings on the operations of Asian crime groups in the United States were enlivened by anonymous witnesses who, hidden under monklike hoods, testified behind screens and spoke into electronic voice scramblers to protect their identities. Investigators, without offering further evidence, identified as organized-crime figures a Chinatown businessman and the former Prime Minister of South Vietnam, neither of whom is known to have any criminal record. Purpose of Forums Historically, such performances have been dismissed by some officials as mere theatrics aimed less at eliciting information than serving as forums to present for public consumption what investigators have learned. Sometimes, that type of forum helps create a constituency for legislative and law-enforcement solutions. Similar hearings have been denounced by others for trampling the civil liberties of targets who have little recourses to defenses.

Walter Burr is worried. He has got the crow-quill plectrum licked. He has found a good supplier of boar bristles. He even knows where to find a dealer in Swiss spruce, which grows only at 3,000-foot altitudes. But what worries Mr. Burr is the wire.

Philip Caldwell, the chairman and chief executive of the Ford Motor Company, announced today that he would retire next year and that his successor would be Donald E. Petersen, the company's president and chief operating officer. Mr. Caldwell said he would step down as head of the nation's second- largest car maker on Feb. 1, four days after his 65th birthday. Ford has never had a mandatory retirement policy. Henry Ford - who founded the company, invented the Model T and pioneered the modern assembly line - was in his 80's when members of the Ford family forced him to retire during World War II.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries today agreed to cut its oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day, to 16 million, to bolster dropping prices. But the group failed to agree after a day of talks on the critical issue of how to distribute the cuts among its members. The decision to cut production was greeted with skepticism by many oil analysts, who said the 13 OPEC nations are already producing 1.5 million barrels a day less than their agreed-upon production ceiling of 17.5 million barrels because of an oversupply of oil. Thus the agreement to cut production to 16 million barrels is meaningless, the analysts said, at least until demand rises substantially during the winter. Problem of Members' Cheating When demand does rise, they added, it is unclear whether OPEC's member nations will be able to stick to their new lower quotas without cheating - a continuing problem that helped cause the current oversupply of oil.

President Reagan drew noisy, emotional responses from both supporters and protesters today as he opened the final week of a re-election drive that, his aides said, would concentrate on the traditional Democratic strongholds of the Northeast and Middle West. Mr. Reagan's advisers asserted that his current lead in the opinion polls made it possible for him to try for a 50- state victory and for heavy Republican inroads in Congress. The visit today to this economically ailing and heavily Democratic state, which has only six electoral votes, was described as part of the strategy. He Will Visit Industrial Areas After spending Tuesday and Wednesday at the White House, Mr. Reagan plans a final swing through economically troubled industrial sections of the Middle West, with forays into parts of the South and into the Middle Western farmlands.