What was going on when I was born?

President Carter, making a quick trip to New York City one week before he expects to return as his party's Presidential nominee, yesterday assailed Ronald Reagan's proposed tax cuts as "sugar-coated poison" and announced that he would offer his own "economic renewal program" in the next few weeks.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Aug. 6--A hurricane, already blamed for 68 deaths in its surge across the Caribbean, headed toward the Gulf of Mexico tonight. It raked Jamaica with 100-mile-an-hour winds and torrential rain, then roared past the Cayman Islands toward western Cuba.

The streets of New York City are dirtier than at anytime in recent memory. Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, the wholesale flower market, the theater district, the garment center, Wall Street, Times Square--some of Manhattan's biggest names are dirty.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6--Senator Edward M. Kennedy, resisting appeals that he unequivocally pledge support for whoever is the party's Presidential nominee, today disclosed plans to break political tradition by addressing next Tuesday's convention debate on the economic planks of the Democratic platform.

LENOX, Mass. FEW problems in historic preser vation are more difficult than those posed by a great country estate, the huge house and grounds that were assembled for an age in which labor was cheap and entertaining was lavish.

There will be Chinese dumplings for delegates and dancing for feminists, cold meats for journalists and hot hors d'oeuvres for members of the House of Representatives.

No longer content with its also-ran status in the financial futures market, New York is taking dead aim at Chicago and its dominant position in this rapidly growing field with the opening of the New York Futures Exchange today.

The use of polygraph instruments, commonly known as lie detectors, to check the honesty of job seekers and employees is spreading from such securityconscious businesses as banks and jewelry concerns to a wide range of private companies in New York State.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6--Against a backdrop of developing regional rivalries over energy resources, the Senate Energy Committee opened hearings today on a bitterly controversial bill that would limit the ability of coalproducing states to raise tax revenues on their coal output.

Two young Brooklyn men were arrested yesterday on charges that they and two accomplices who escaped had held up a dozen passengers on a southbound Seventh Avenue IRT express between the 34th and 14th Street stations late Tuesday night.