What was going on when I was born?

IT has been a year since a confrontation in the sprawling township of Sharpeville claimed 29 lives and began South Africa's latest cycle of racial conflict. The bleak anniversary was marked in typically tragic fashion last week as the death toll from the year of strife passed 670 and mixed-race youths hurled rocks and firebombs at suburban homes owned by whites, the first time turmoil has spread into white neighborhoods. Nor was civil unrest all Pretoria had on its mind. A week after international bankers served notice that they would not roll over billions of dollars of loans, a Government that took pride in its credit rating halted repayments until Dec. 31. Controls to stem the flow of currency out of the country were re-introduced, preventing foreign companies from removing assets. The moves were intended, an economist said, to provide ''a breathing space.'' The rand rebounded from a record low but soon plunged again, prompting a Government promise to stand behind the banks. Gold provides about half of South Africa's foreign exchange, and a walkout by miners at five gold mines and two collieries could have compounded the Government's woes. But the union ''suspended'' the strike after a few days to spare miners dismissal and eviction from company hostels, as the mine owners had threatened.

Most of the new residential development now under way in Yorkville is taking shape in the form of large high-rise projects. Among them are the Astor, a 291-unit condominium on 93d Street between Second and Third Avenues, and the Barclay, the first of two 37-story rental buildings being built on York Avenue between 90th and 92d Streets.

PASS-INTERFERENCE penalties will decrease, more players will be injured, games will be shorter. These are the likely effects, intended or otherwise, of the major changes for the National Football League's 66th season, which begins today. Every offseason, the five members of the league's competition committee spend two weeks on Maui, one of the quieter Hawaiian islands, discussing the inequities of the game and how to correct them. Sometimes, the talks even continue when they come off the golf course. At their last gathering, they found several areas that needed altering and recommended the changes to the owners, who had a few ideas of their own. The result of all the tinkering are a dozen or so rule and policy changes designed to make the game more interesting. These were among the more significant of them: * Defensive backs, long the objects of legislation that would inhibit their movements, are now allowed equal access to a pass. Incidental contact with the receiver that does not materially affect the receiver's ability to catch the ball will not result in a pass interference call against the back. ''For sure,'' said Art McNally, the league's supervisor of officials, ''pass interference calls are going to be down in 1985.''

President Reagan, seeking to thwart protectionist legislation in Congress, announced plans today to move against Japan, South Korea, Brazil and the European Economic Community for ''unfair trading practices.'' At the same time Mr. Reagan, in his weekly radio speech, firmly reiterated his free-trade position and rejected Congressional calls for overall restrictive trade legislation. ''While we will use our powers as a lever to open closed doors abroad, we will continue to resist protectionist measures that would raise prices, lock out trade, and destroy the jobs and prosperity trade bring to all,'' Mr. Reagan said. ''There are no winners in a trade war; only losers.''

As the elderly remnants of Cracow's ancient and once-flourishing Jewish population murmured half-remembered prayers, Eric Strom, a 13-year-old from Stamford, Conn., read from the Torah and became the first youth to mark his bar mitzvah here in more than 20 years. His voice was firm as he addressed the congregation from the bema, the raised platform in the center of the old synagogue. He read a portion of Scripture dealing with redemption and rejection of violence. Above him in the balcony stood Roza Jakubowicz, the Cracow Jewish leader who asked American Jews to send a bar mitzvah. She cried openly. The theme of Jewish life stirring in Poland, where Jews flourished until the Nazi horror, infused the bar mitzvah with tragedy and special meaning. But a conflict between different strains of American Judaism threatened to obscure what the Strom family had intended by coming here for the ceremony celebrating their son's arrival at the age of religious responsibility. After the bar mitzvah, as she happily served carp and tongue to guests, Mrs. Jakubowicz paused and answered a visitor who asked her what she had been thinking during the service.

AMONG the joys of owning a suburban home is the opportunity to alter the structure as needs and tastes change. No wonder buyers of condominiums and houses in planned developments bristle when this right is curtailed and architectural standards are rigidly upheld. Such restrictions may at first seem a minor disadvantage, but owners often become obsessed with the idea of change and try to sneak in whatever alterations they see fit. Typical of this conflict is the situation at Hastings Square, a 382-unit homeowner association in Washington Township. Ronald Smith, the president, cites problems with people arbitrarily fencing off areas around their homes, installing differrent types of gates, adding extra windows and poorly matched skylights - and even stringing clotheslines across backyards.

Federal investigators, who are looking into the cause of jetliner crash here that killed all 31 people aboard, have found pieces of an engine on the runway used by the plane, a Federal official said tonight. The parts from a Pratt & Whitney JT8D engine, the type that was on the plane that crashed, were found under its flight path, said Jim Burnett, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. The Midwest Express DC-9 crashed and burned just after takeoff Friday from General Billy Mitchell Field here. This afternoon investigators also recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the DC-9. At a news conference tonight, however, it was emphasized that no definite link had been established between the engine parts found on the runway and the downed plane. Investigators were searching for other planes that might have shed those parts, and they said they would not be able to confirm that the parts were from that plane until they can take the engines apart.

New York's Dutchess County is growing economically and and one node of its growth is Poughkeepsie, a former manufacturing center that is experiencing a commercial revitalization. To encourage further growth there, two adjoining cast-iron buildings erected in the 1870's will soon be renovated into a 20,000-square-foot building with both office and retail space.

LOOKED at coolly, dispassionately, and without open-mouthed astonishment, the Jets are not yet the disaster they seem to be courting. But they could be. Sure, all these strange happenings seem to be indicative of deep-seated problems and have an effect on the team they are fielding for today's season opener against the Raiders at Los Angeles: * Joe Klecko does a 40-yard sprint and is lost for most of training camp. * Mark Gastineau breaks his thumb in practice and re-injures it by going through unauthorized weight-lifting. He hopes to be a part-timer today.

THEY sat with their shoulders and heads forward, towels slung around their necks. One held a pencil and drew arrows and the other three nodded. They were together, hunched over a yellow legal pad, scribbling and scratching, taking the pencil from one another. Then, as though they had figured out the map to a treasure, one said out loud, ''That's it. That's what we have to do every time.'' These were the Giant running backs, convening for a few minutes the other day to make sure that they were in sync, to reassure one another that what has been happening on the field was still operating in theory in the locker room. The designs mattered to them as much on paper, as if they wanted to retain what they had already rehearsed, as if Rob Carpenter, Joe Morris, George Adams and Maurice Carthon understood what their performances would mean to any Giants' success. But an observer wondered if they understood what their presence signified to the Giants, who last year won nine games and lost seven in the regular season, advanced through one round of playoffs and yet were still saddled with the image of a team that struggles for every breath of air.

WHEN T. A. Wilson became chief executive of the Boeing Company in 1969, it was on the brink of collapse. Commercial airplane orders had dried up, Government aerospace business was being cut back and Boeing was reeling under the development costs of the 747 jumbo jet. Mr. Wilson set in motion dramatic layoffs. In the next three years, a period referred to here as the ''Boeing Bust,'' Boeing slashed its work force from 150,000 to 50,000. In the Seattle area, unemployment rose as high as 14 percent and billboards asked the last person leaving the city to please turn out the lights. In the midst of it all, at age 49, Mr. Wilson suffered a heart attack. Those catastrophic days are just distant memories now. Both Mr. Wilson and Boeing have recovered quite well, and Mr. Wilson, who is known throughout the industry simply as ''T,'' is nearing the end of what turned out to be a remarkable career. He will leave a company that strides as a giant across the aviation industry, manufacturing more than half of the commercial jets used in the non-Communist world. It is a leaner company, with a stronger military business; a company that appears to be able to withstand the inevitable cyclical downturns that beset the commercial airplane business.

THE Rev. Antonio S. Pascual, who came to Elmont from the Phiippines in 1975 to serve the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, sometimes tells a joke to describe the plight of foreign-born priests on Long Island. Father Pascual, by all accounts a popular priest among his parishioners at St. Boniface Church, joked that the ''long line'' at his confession booth ''may be because people think I don't understand them.'' As the corps of Long Island priests who were born in the United States ages and dwindles, and as fewer men enter the ministry, a growing number of foreign-born Roman Catholic priests like Father Pascual have immigrated here both to fill the void in the diocese, the second-largest diocese in the country, and to follow their dreams of a better life. While their contributions are not questioned, some say they have not met with total acceptance, both among parishioners and some American-born priests, primarily because of their difficulty with the language. ''In many senses I still feel like an outsider,'' Father Pascual said.