What was going on when I was born?

THERE'S a giant white deer that has for decades run through Silver Lake, the county's 236-acre natural preserve in Harrison. At least that's what some people say. The rock structure there, known as ''Pop's Cave,'' once housed hermits, perhaps even the legendary Leatherman, while the old stone foundations, most no bigger than good-sized closets, were way stations on the Underground Railroad, sheltering slaves escaping to Canada. Or so it is said. ''Some people say the trees around the lake once had silver leaves and that's how Silver Lake got it's name,'' said Michael R. Casarella, the Harrison Town historian. ''There are a lot of legends about Silver Lake.''

ONCE the Wunderkind of Wall Street, George L. Ball, now 46, is finding the going much tougher in middle age. He is still a work machine - logging 50,000 air miles a month and keeping a workaholic's schedule from dawn to dusk and beyond. But, success has proved elusive. The firm he heads - Prudential-Bache Securities Inc. - has rolled up multi-million dollar losses that have staggered Wall Street. And, Mr. Ball himself continues to be dogged by the check-kiting scandal that took place at E.F. Hutton & Company during his five-year tenure as Hutton's president.

Airport security varies widely around the world, but a review of procedures shows that in general those practiced in developing countries tend to be lax while those in North America and the Communist bloc tend to be stringent. In Europe, the review shows, the major airports usually follow a high standard of security. A notable exception is Athens, where hijackers last week seized a T.W.A. plane, some of whose passengers are still held hostage in Beirut, Lebanon. The review was conducted by correspondents for The New York Times and supplemented by interviews with State Department officials and representatives of the International Air Transport Association and the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association. Officials of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to be interviewed.

HERE is one way to view the economy: Over all it is growing, though just barely, and factories and farms have tumbled into a recession. Yet signs of worse to come are scarce. Inflation, particularly, is comatose, and oil prices are ebbing again. The Federal Reserve Board, the ogre behind the severity of the recession in 1981 and 1982 when it forced up interest rates to stop inflation, is the angel this time around for letting interest rates fall. The White House and Congress seem committed to cutting the budget deficits at least enough to reverse their growth. Such restraint might normally flatten a soft economy, but the gratified financial markets are already responding with further reductions in interest rates, complementing the Fed and helping the economy. Color the outlook reassuring. And here is another: The mostly dollar-driven decline in farming and manufacturing will fan through the rest of country, crippling the companies that supply and service them, the banks where they save and borrow, the stores where farmers and factory workers shop. Other strong countries, notably Japan and Germany, will ignore Reagan Administration appeals to stimulate their economies and buy more American goods. Congress, aghast, will curb imports, swathing the injured but reviving inflation. Consumers, deeply in debt, short of savings and wary of the future, will stop buying. Many healthy businesses will put off spending and borrowing until they know how the President's tax plan plays out in Congress, and they won't know that before late fall.

WHETHER a home is in the city or the country, it can be attacked by animal, bird or insect pests that cause structural damage, decay and unsightly conditions. Apartment-house cooperatives and condominiums, for example, often are plagued by pigeons that make a mess of terraces, cornices and facades and roost noisily on window-mounted air-conditioners. Suburban homeowners have to contend with the voracious appetite of the carpenter ant - a scourge far more troublesome in the New York metropolitan area than the termite - or the havoc created by birds, raccoons, bats or squirrels. Understanding the habits of these pests and knowing what measures can be taken to minimize their damage can save dollars and annoyance for homeowners.

WITH the question of whether the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant should be licensed for testing at 5 percent of full power headed toward the Federal courts, an answer to the larger question of when, if ever, the $4.2 billion plant will operate commercially still may be far away. Also in doubt is whether a plan supported by the Nassau and Suffolk County Executives that would purportedly hold electric rate increases to as little as 2.2 percent a year if Shoreham goes into operation can gain the approval it needs in Albany. Critics of Shoreham, including Governor Cuomo and a majority of the 18-member Suffolk Legislature, said it made little sense for the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a low-power license while there was yet no approved evacuation plan for communities around the plant. They point out that without an approved plan, Shoreham cannot be licensed for full-power operation under current Federal regulations. And, they note, the low-power testing will release radiation in the reactor core that would add an estimated $150 million to the cost of decommissioning if commercial operation is ruled out.

An intercepted letter to prison, documents that were supposed to have been destroyed but were not, and a coded datebook were key clues that led the West German and Brazilian authorities to a little country graveyard and the unraveling of one of the great mysteries left over from World War II. In that grave on June 6, investigators found the bones of a man experts now agree was unquestionably Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death of Auschwitz, who selected 400,000 people to die in the gas chambers and performed gruesome pseudomedical experiments on hundreds of others. Clues Available Years Ago Forty years after the fitful hunt for the Nazi doctor began and six years after his death by drowning at the age of 68 at a beach resort near Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, officials have provided details how they found Dr. Mengele's buried bones. But their accounts also suggest that the same information credited with solving the Mengele case was readily available 10 and 20 years ago. Had the authorities acted then, some officials say, Dr. Mengele might well have been captured and made to stand trial on charges that he directed some of the most heinous episodes of mass murder and torture to come out of Hitler's ''final solution'' for the Jews.

A 20-story condominium-apartment building designed to reflect the iconoclastic Memphis design movement will soon rise on the southeast corner of Charles and Washington Streets at the western edge of Greenwich Village. When completed in the summer of 1986, the residential tower, known as Memphis Downtown, will offer 80 studio and one-bedroom apartments that will be priced from $187,000 to $358,000.

The United States has stepped up efforts to persuade the Shiite Amal leadership that failure to release 40 American hostages quickly and without conditions will severely damage the Shiites and Lebanon itself, Administration officials said today. The American appeal to the Shiites' self-interest has been delivered by Reginald Bartholomew, the United States Ambassador to Lebanon, and by other foreign diplomats to Nabih Berri, the Amal leader. But the appeals have not produced results, the Administration officials said. One State Department official said that the situation seemed ''static,'' but that there was a determination to keep stressing the same message in the hope that ''reason will prevail.''

Honoring Pulitzer winners is a good idea. But, I'm afraid, it's not enough. We need more than honor. More about that later. You cannot honor Pulitzer winners without honoring the entire community of writers for the theater. There are magnificent plays and importatnt writers who have slipped through the Pulitzer net. Furthermore, prize-winning plays do not come strictly from individuals. It takes all of us, working carefully, obstinately, in good faith. . . all of us, working full time to produce the two or three plays which will survive from any given season in this country. And although we write our plays alone, we are not alone in writing them. It is one of our few consistent comforts to know that other dramatists, people we respect and cherish, are just as depressed as we are. No, I'm afraid it is not enough for you to honor us. We need for each of you, acting in whatever capacity you can, to act now to save us. We need you to defend us and protect us from a theatrical world that is increasingly ambivalent, at best, about the contribution of the dramatist. American dramatists of another age would have howled in laughter at that very phrase. ''The contribution of the dramatist? Hah!'' they would say. ''What is the play, for God's sake? A donation?''

The Shiite Amal militia leader, Nabih Berri, warned today that any military action by the United States over the hijacking crisis could endanger the lives of the hostages. As the hijacking crisis entered its ninth day, the radio station of the Christian Phalange Party, the Voice of Lebanon, reported that American F-14 Tomcat fighters flew over Lebanon early this morning, roaming as far as the Bekaa region, the stronghold of Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalists. [The Pentagon denied that F-14 jets had been sent over Lebanon.] Antiaircraft Guns Set Up The Shiite militia Amal and the mostly Shiite troops of the Lebanese Army's Sixth Brigade, which, for all practical purposes has become a part of the Amal forces in West Beirut, set up antiaircraft guns around the perimeter of Beirut International Airport.

In a voice choking with emotion, President Reagan pledged today to bring to justice the killers of four American marines killed Wednesday in San Salvador. ''They say the men who murdered these sons of America escaped, disappeared into the city streets, but I pledge to you today they will not evade justice on earth any more than they can escape the judgment of God,'' Mr. Reagan said. ''We and the Salvadoran leaders will move any mountain and ford any river to find the jackals and bring them and their colleagues in terror to justice.'' Mr. Reagan, and his wife, Nancy, flew to Andrews Air Force Base for the brief ceremony that began as the coffins were carried from an Air Force transport plane and ended when each coffin was loaded into a hearse and driven away.