What was going on when I was born?

ABOUT a century ago, Eugene O. Wilcox came to Long Island from the Midwest. He settled in Speonk, among families including the Tuttles and the Hallocks, whose ancestors first touched the Island's shores in 1640. It was there that Mr. Wilcox first observed the ways of the White Pekin, a duck brought to Long Island from the Orient in 1873, and decided to go into the duck-raising business. His Tuttle and Hallock neighbors, who had been more involved in farming and fishing, quickly followed Mr. Wilcox into the new industry. Today, his farm, now called the Oceanic Duck Farm Inc., is still in operation. Its owner, David A. Wilcox, says that his grandfather's farm is the oldest continually operated commercial duck farm in North America. Also in operation are the Seatuck Farm Inc. of Eastport, owned by David W. Tuttle of the original Tuttle family, and the C & R Duck Farm Inc. of Westhampton, owned by John H. Phillips, a Hallock descendant.

A HOUSING-COST survey of 100 residential areas throughout the country has ranked the Monmouth County horse-farm township of Colts Neck as the second highest, just behind the Long Beach area of Los Angeles. In Colts Neck, the survey found, the average new home costs $225,000 and the average resale, $190,000; in Long Beach, the averages are $340,000 and $123,000, respectively. The survey was made by the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Service, a broker network based in Des Moines. It found that the average cost for a typical ''upscale'' home - 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 to 2 baths, 1,600 square feet of living space and a ''desirable'' neighborhood - was $96,000 when the house was new and $83,000 for a resale. New Jersey real-estate experts say that Colts Neck prices are probably higher than the state average. The housing market, they note, is growing rapidly, with prices ranging from $5,000 for a row house in Camden to $4 million for a mansion in Saddle River.

The owner of Dubrow's Cafeteria on Seventh Avenue and 38th Street has agreed to sell his lease to a developer, apparently clearing the for the construction of a new building on the 20,000-square-foot site. Philip Pilevsky, president of Philips International Holding Company, a development company, said he has made a commitment to buy the lease, which will give him control of the site.

THIS fall, the Director Door Company of Copiague will move to new quarters more than twice the size of the 10,000-square-foot facility it now occupies. The company's vice president, James Director, said the expansion will mean adding 30 new people to his work force. The new $1.5 million plant, also in Copiague, is being built with low-interest, tax-exempt financing from an industrial development bond issued through the babylon Industrial Development Agency. ''We would not even have begun to start the project'' without the availability of the bond, Mr. Director said. ''We couldn't have afforded to do it.'' But the future of these bonds - the principal financing for much of Long Island's industrial expansion in recent years - is in jeopardy. President Reagan has proposed ending the tax exemption as part of his tax plan now before Congress.

ITS no-holds-barred advertising campaign for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher created a national furor in 1979. Its 90-second sci-fi spot for British Airways - showing the entire island of Manhattan coming in for a landing at Heathrow Airport -was one of the most talked-about commercials of 1983. But in the past year, probably nothing that the Saatchi & Saatchi Company has done for its clients is as provocative as what it is doing on its own behalf. The huge advertising agency has been on a trans-Atlantic shopping spree, buying up not only advertising and public relations agencies, but even a management consulting firm. ''They're collectors,'' said Jeremy Bullmore, chairman of J. Walter Thompson's London agency, which Saatchi & Saatchi overtook in billings in 1979. ''They collect companies, clients, money, pictures, everything. They vastly enjoy growth and acquisition.''

A visitor doesn't even have to enter a theater to feel the particular excitement of London theatergoing this summer. For a New Yorker, it's a tonic just to walk down Shaftesbury Avenue -provided one doesn't get trampled by the stampede. While Broadway's most densely packed blocks of playhouses look like abandoned war zones, with most theaters dark and few pedestrians in sight, the West End offers the startling contrast of a mob scene. Theater may not be better than ever in London - in fact there is no fully satisfying new play and, as in New York, no electrifying new musical - but it's thriving. People will seemingly submit to anything on a London stage. Sometimes that anything is an empty spectacle like ''Starlight Express,'' but the town's biggest hit of the moment is ''Richard III.'' During a two-week playgoing marathon, I had the pleasure of watching actors such as Ian McKellen, Daniel Massey, Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins and Kenneth Branagh in plays by the diverse likes of John Webster, Harley Granville Barker, Howard Brenton and David Hare, as well as Shakespeare.

IN the midst of summer, when people in most places are thinking about swimming and picnics and the sun, residents of Bridgeport are already embroiled in a heated campaign for the November mayoral election. September primaries are expected in both major political parties. The Republicans meet to formally endorse candidates on July 23, and the Democrats the following day, and contenders who are not endorsed can force a primary by collecting the requisite number of signatures. The Bridgeport campaign features a second comeback attempt by a former three-term Mayor, John C. Mandanici and the third bid by Charles B. Tisdale, who is trying to become the city's first black mayor. There are seven contenders, five of whom have previously sought the office.

If words were weapons, President Reagan would have certainly drawn blood last week. Lashing out at five nations he accused of sponsoring terrorism - Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba and Nicaragua - Mr. Reagan told the American Bar Association in Washington that he was ''not going to tolerate attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.'' Syria, the target of similar verbal onslaughts - it was accused of being behind the bombing of the Beirut barracks in which 241 marines were killed - was not included in what Mr. Reagan termed ''a new international version of Murder Inc.'' It was a gesture of gratitude, the White House said, for President Hafez al-Assad's role in the release of the 39 Americans from T.W.A. Flight 847 held hostage by Shiite terrorists for more than two weeks. But even as the State Department was preparing the legal groundwork to charge the hijackers for the murder of one of the Americans, the Government-owned radio in Lebanon identified them as Ali Atwi, Ali Younis and Ahmed Gharibeh and said they had been ''referred to the competent judicial authorities.''

After nearly three years on Broadway, and 1,147 performances, ''Cats'' is still in the first of its nine lives. The colored overhead light clusters of the night sky glitter over the junkyard as they did when the show opened at the Winter Garden on Oct. 7, 1982. The floor shines as brightly and the special effects function as flawlessly. The wigs are as full, the costumes and makeup as suggestive of the feline form, and Grizabella, the worn-out glamour cat, still sings the beautiful laments of her lost youth with the same stirring pathos. The box-office figures - and the fact that a pair of good weekend seats must be ordered six months in advance - indicate that audiences are still paying the cats the homage that T. S. Eliot's poems tell us they demand. This is no accident. Like a ground crew inspecting an airplane before takeoff, a special maintenance group systematically reviews, spot-checks and inspects every aspect of the production to ensure it will appear as fresh as it did on opening night. The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, based on T. S. Eliot's ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats,'' relies heavily on spectacle and special effects and, of course, the talent and endurance of its cast.

EVERY day since Opening Day this season, when the 44-year-old ballplayer ripped two hits - a run-scoring single and a two-run double to lead the Reds to a 4-1 victory over Montreal - The Cincinnati Post has run a color box about him on its front sports page. The headline on the box reads, ''Countdown to the Ty-breaker.'' Below that, it reads: ''Pete Rose's magic number to pass Ty Cobb's career hit total of 4,191.'' And below that, in big black double digits, are the figures. At the start of the season, the number was 95. Yesterday, it stood at 35. Alongside the headline and the number is a mug shot of a middle-aged man in a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap. He has a broad face and broad nose and heavy eyebrows above smallish eyes; a slightly shadowy beard; his dusky-colored hair is falling over his ears and his lips are pursed in a determined arch, or is it a soupcon of a snarl?

The four-story tenement at 379 First Avenue, near 22d Street, is certainly not the first Manhattan walk-up to be upgraded and converted to an owner-occupied residence, but it probably has more expensive features than most. That's because the developers, Barry Manson and Warren W. Sabloff, have their eye on an impressive sales price - $250,000 for each of the eight 564-square-foot one-bedroom apartments, all of them floor-throughs.

President Reagan transferred his power to Vice President Bush for about eight hours today in a move that White House officials said temporarily made Mr. Bush the ''Acting President.'' Shortly before his surgery, Mr. Reagan sent a five-paragraph letter to the President pro tem of the Senate and the Speaker of the House transferring Presidential power to Mr. Bush. At 7:22 P.M.M. he signed another letter reclaiming his authority. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said tonight that Mr. Reagan was dozing intermittently but that the anesthesia from the surgery had worn off. Mr. Speakes added that Capt. Dale W. Oller, Mr. Reagan's chief surgeon, had said, ''If the President needed to make a decision, he could make it.''