What was going on when I was born?

The road to Westway has now been narrowed to this: Can New York officials persuade Congress to extend beyond Sept. 30 the deadline for exchanging Westway's Federal financing for mass-transit money and a more modest highway instead? And, can the Army Corps of Engineers quickly overcome the objections of a Federal appeals court, which ruled against Westway this week? In its nearly 15 years as an ambitious blueprint to redevelop Manhattan's West Side, Westway repeatedly has survived court rulings and administrative decisions that were described as potentially fatal. But while the project has passed largely intact through hazardous crossroads before, even many of its supporters acknowledge that now time and the number of places they can turn seem to be running out. Supporters of the highway and development project along the Hudson River have been waging a two-front war, in Congress and the courts. This week they were rebuffed on both fronts.

When the G. Heileman Brewing Company announced last month that it would build a new brewery in Milwaukee, a lot of people were surprised. The Stroh Brewery Company had just closed its famous Detroit brewery and the Miller Brewing Company had taken a $140 million write-down on a huge new Ohio plant that it has yet to use. And here was Heileman, the upstart from western Wisconsin, building a brewery in the face of sluggish growth in consumption and excess industry capacity - problems that have bedeviled Heileman, too, though less than many other companies. In fact, the ultramodern brewery the company plans to open in mid-1986 to produce European-style beers is one way Heileman hopes to grow in the face of slack demand. ''Our new plant is an effort to capture a segment of the market that we think is available,'' said Russell G. Cleary, Heileman's 51-year-old chairman. ''Although beer sales are flat over all, imported beer is enjoying a double-digit expansion. We think we can duplicate European quality.''

Among Wall Street's privately owned brokerage partnerships, profitability has always been a jealously guarded secret. But Bear, Stearns & Company disclosed all yesterday in announcing the terms of its plans for an initial public offering of stock - and at the same time confirmed its reputation as a savvy trader able to reap profits even in bad times. In recent years, when heated competition and volatile markets depressed the results of many publicly owned firms, Bear, Stearns produced returns of better than 50 percent on its partners' capital. It had net income before taxes of $163.8 million on revenue of $1.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended April 30, 1984, and net income of $168.7 million on revenue of $1.8 billion in the most recent year. For its most recent quarter, ended in July, Bear, Stearns earned $69 million on revenues of $565 million.

It never looked like it would come to this: There were the Mets, a six-run lead vanished, clinging in one half of the ninth and then scratching their way to victory in the bottom half. First came an infield hit, then a bunt, and then Keith Hernandez's ground-ball single to left field that gave the Mets a 7-6 triumph over the St Louis Cardinals yesterday, putting them back in sole possession of first place with a one-game lead in the National League East. ''We had to win this one,'' said the manager, Dave Johnson. ''We had to show the Cardinals that we're to going to win.''

A Government-sponsored panel today recommended the abolition of the pass laws, which restrict blacks' right to move to the townships set aside for them in urban areas. The pass laws, long a source of black resentment, are known officially as influx control measures. They enforce apartheid by seeking to limit the number of blacks able to live in the segregated townships set aside for them near white-dominated cities. The panel, which had been appointed by President P.W. Botha, recommended a ''strategy for orderly urbanization,'' making it easier for blacks from rural areas to take up residence in the segregated townships. The panel offered no proposal for residential desegregation.

FROM the tip of Manhattan to Greenwich Village, from the South Street Seaport to the Battery, downtown is celebrating this weekend. Whether it is a party for something new, like the newly finished dock at the seaport, or something old, like the Feast of San Gennaro, there will be songs, food and fun. With dozens of bands and two nights of fireworks, the South Street Seaport is dedicating its newest and largest dock, a building of glass and crimson steel called the Pier 17 Pavilion, continuing a gala christening celebration that also marks completion of the entire seaport. All the events are free.

The Senate Judiciary Committee announced today that it would investigate the Justice Department's handling of a series of prosecutions against large corporations. The inquiry will also include the department's investigation of Jackie Presser, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which was abandoned after it was disclosed that Mr. Presser's crimes had been authorized by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Congressional aides said the investigation would focus on criminal prosecutions of several companies, including E. F. Hutton, the GTE Government Systems Corporation, Eli Lilly & Company and numerous military contractors. The department's handling of corporate crime has been widely criticized by Democrats as too lenient. Much of the criticism has centered on the Hutton case, in which the company pleaded guilty earlier this year to 2,000 criminal counts of participating in a bank overdrafting scheme, but none of its executives were charged.

INNUMERABLE Indias will be on display, this year and next, all over the United States as part of the Festival of India. The performing arts of India have been seen and heard at Lincoln Center all this week, and many of New York's institutions - among them, the Asia Society, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the New York City Opera and the American Museum of Natural History - will contribute to the festival, in one way or another, well into the spring of 1986. But they will have a hard time keeping up with ''India!,'' the exhibition that opens to the public tomorrow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and can be seen there through Jan. 5. Exhibitions are made from many motives. Among them are vanity, vengeance, an antenna for centenaries, the derivatives of international high politics, the wish to oblige a potential donor and the will to disentangle a problem that needs to be studied with the evidence on the table. But the best exhibitions are acts of love, and ''India!'' is one of them.

The place was Track 3 of the 42d Street shuttle at Grand Central. The music was ''Rondeau'' by Jean Joseph Mouret - the theme from ''Masterpiece Theater'' - played by a brass quintet. The subway was momentarily ennobled, the passing commuters both pleased and befuddled. The entertainment was courtesy of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. At a news conference yesterday, to the soaring tones of Mouret and other composers, M.T.A. officials announced that eight subway stations would become makeshift concert halls this fall under a program called ''Music Under New York.''

The headline on a television-page article in some editions yesterday about a violation of network news procedure in the recent appearance of Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d on ''This Week With David Brinkley'' misidentified the network involved. It was ABC, not NBC.

Philip D. Kaltenbacher, the new chairman of the Port Authority, is a man with a healthy set of priorities. ''I like the smell of flowers,'' he said. ''I like to tell a joke. I like to play with our dog. But I get a boot out of public service, I really do.''

The Sports People column yesterday inaccurately described circumstances surrounding the resignation of Bob Patterson as athletic director at Memphis State University in 1982. It also erred in describing a letter that the school's president, Thomas Carpenter, had written on the subject. Dr. Carpenter wrote that the resignation was accepted after the university learned that Mr. Patterson (not Dr. Carpenter) had improperly used his own funds to pay fees owed by student athletes.