What was going on when I was born?

The Government acceded today to the demands of Polish farmers to create an independent union. Members of the union, Rural Solidarity, and Government representatives signed an agreement to permit the organization to come into being officially by May 10. The union will be open to the country's 3.5 million private farmers and will have the organizational structure of Solidarity, the union that now represents virtually all of Poland's industrial and office workers. The agreement removes a prolonged cause of tension after the Government's initial rejection of a union for farmers. The authorities had asserted that such a union would be a potential source of anarchy and antisocialist ferment.

Throughout the two long nights and the intervening day that he kept his vigil beside the gravel road leading to the Dutch Creek No. 1 coal mine, 51-year-old Vince Ayala held to the hope that his ''baby brother'' John had somehow eluded the deadly explosion that ripped through the mine last Wednesday. ''I'm not really a giver-upper,'' he said. ''The guy had a lot of gumption. The guy had a lot of quick moves. If there had been a hole he would have made it.''

A two-day strike by firefighters and other municipal employees that threw this city into crisis and allowed fires to race out of control ended tonight. The unions agreed to go back to work while their contract dispute was submitted to binding arbitration. Homer LaRue, a state mediator, said at 5:10 P.M., ''We expect full resumption of all normal city services as of right now.'' Shortly afterward, the more than 1,000 strikers - firemen, police superior officers, sanitation workers and other members of the Department of Public Works - began returning to their jobs. The agreement to return to work and to submit the dispute to binding arbitration must be ratified by the unions' membership. No date was set for the vote. Mayor Hails Accord Mayor Gerald E. Loehr, who, with other city officials, had been up for much of both nights, said he was pleased ''to have it resolved.'' It was ''regrettable that it happened,'' he said, ''but we're pleased there was no loss of life.''

As many as 15 persons were killed this afternoon when a twin-engine commuter airliner and a small private craft carrying sky divers collided in clear weather over northern Colorado, spreading debris over an area of several square miles. The number of fatalities made it the worst aviation accident in the United States this year. The two planes collided at an altitude of about 8,000 feet one and a half miles from the Fort Collins-Loveland airport, about 40 miles north of Denver. The parachutists' plane had taken off from that airport shortly before the accident.

The first high-level meetings between Indian Government officials and the Reagan Administration ended today in sharp disagreement over the Administration's plans to bolster Pakistan's armed forces. American and Indian officials said that Eric Gonsalves, the senior career official in India's Foreign Ministry, expressed New Delhi's deep concern to Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and other department officials over the willingness of the Reagan Administraton to provide Pakistan with about $1 billion in military and economic aid over two years. India regards Pakistan as a threat to its security. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain told reporters that Pakistan had the right to buy arms. (Page 4.)

When the audience attending a New York Philharmonic concert at Avery Fischer Hall at Lincoln Center opened the program Thursday night, there was an insert that read in part: ''This evening's program is being performed in memory of one of the outstanding patrons of the performing arts in our city.'' The patron to whom the concert was dedicated was Fan Fox Samuels, whose name was unknown to many in the general public but whose quiet donations of millions of dollars to Lincoln Center had made her one of its major benefactors. Mrs. Samuels, who lived at 666 Park Avenue, had died earlier in the day at Doctors Hospital at the age of 84. She and her husband, Leslie R. Samuels, had befriended the arts and artists and other causes in New York City, and had given generously to them through a foundation the couple set up 22 years ago and operated out of their home. Very few, outside of their circle of friends and the beneficiaries, knew the full extent of their largesse.

Some are happy to find work pruning bushes or shuffling fast-food orders, while others are not satisfied unless they land a job with a top-ranking concern in their profession-to-be. But analysts in government, business, industry and education say that most young people in the New York metropolitan area, whatever their aspirations, will have a hard time finding summer jobs this year. ''As tough as ever, and maybe tougher,'' said Miriam Ourin, principal economist for the New York State Department of Labor, assessing the upcoming summer job market for youths. ''This year, like every other year, there are going to be a great many more young people looking for summer jobs than are going to find them.'' The squeeze is an extension of a year-round youth-unemployment problem that is particularly acute in New York, according to Samuel Ehrenhalt, regional commissioner of labor statistics for the Federal Department of Labor. ''The proportion of youngsters aged 16 to 19 that have full- or part-time jobs is substantially lower in New York City than for the country as a whole,'' he said. ''The average here is 22 percent, compared with 47 percent nationally.''

Syrian forces that have been besieging the Lebanese Christian city of Zahle for 17 days allowed a convoy of four trucks to enter today with 40 tons of flour, other food supplies and medicines. Residents reached by telephone reported that, with machine-gun fire echoing from surrounding hills, most of the 200,000 inhabitants stayed indoors as the trucks sent by the International Committee of the Red Cross were unloaded. They did not venture out for Good Friday services either, the informants reported.

The door is kept locked on the new complex of offices that Prof. Jan Lombard occupies here, and there is no sign to identify them. Inside, the professor toils at finding the ways and means - especially the means - to give content to a slogan that has been presented as a main plank in the platform the governing National Party is offering to the all-white electorate, which goes to the polls in two weeks. The slogan is ''Constellation of States.'' Supposedly it has something to do with the just economic and political order that Prime Minister P.W. Botha says he wishes to create in southern Africa. But the precise nature of that order, the questions of who will belong to it and on what terms, of how it can be expected to satisfy the aspirations of the various population groups in this white-dominated country, all remain a blur. Sometimes ''constellation'' is used to describe the proposed political and military grouping that would be created to withstand the ''Marxist threat'' that southern Africa is supposed to be facing - not just South Africa and the tiny black states it has created within its borders, which were formerly known as homelands, but neighboring nations as well.

Two miners were killed today when they were buried by a coal slide in central Yugoslavia.

Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said today that if Congress rejected a Reagan Administration arms package for Saudi Arabia it would be ''a grievous setback in American relationships'' with the Saudis.

A basic change in the attitude of the United States toward Israeli military action in Lebanon appears to have given a new flexibility to Israel's Army and Air Force, which have been busy recently with air strikes and ground assaults against Palestinian guerrilla bases in Lebanese territory. The Carter Administration used to criticize Israel publicly for the attacks, especially the air strikes, which the Lebanese authorities say have caused many civilian casualties. But the Reagan Administration has adopted the view, made clear during Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.'s visit to Jerusalem April 6 and 7, that Israel has a legitimate interest in keeping its northern border free of guerrillas and that it must decide itself how best to accomplish that. The Haig talks left Israeli officials with the impression that they would not be criticized for using American-made weapons in Lebanon if their actions did not upset any efforts to end fighting between Syrian troops and Lebanese Christian militias.