What was going on when I was born?

UPTON THIS is a time of uncertainty for scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, where Federal budget reductions have forced the elimination of 500 jobs and halted work on several major projects. And the laboratory's financial worries have been compounded by difficulties with a critical component of the laboratory's showpiece, the huge nuclear accelerator known as Isabelle. Next month, scientists working on Isabelle will submit revised estimates to the United States Department of Energy on the time and money needed to complete the Isabelle project, which may cost substantially more than the $275 million that was projected in 1978. Additionally, they will address the question of whether Isabelle will be able to reach its most ambitious goal - energizing two colliding proton beams to 400 billion electron-volts apiece.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- MICHAEL deCOURCY HINDS is a reporter on the Home Section of The Times. By MICHAEL deCOURCY HINDS The distance between Manhattan and its three nearby airports need no longer be measured in terms of potholes, traffic jams and cab fares. For the last few months, two new helicopter services have been sweeping people into the air, dazzling them with breathtaking views of the city and charging as little as $1 - and as much as $45 - for flights to the airports. But then, some travelers may prefer the familar risks and delays of ground transportation to flying 150 miles an hour in a craft that takes off straight up like a rocket, banks sharply into hairpin turns and, in turbulent air, twists clockwise, downward and sideways all at the same stomach-turning time. And there are other drawbacks. The two services limit luggage; only one, so far, offers service on weekends, and it is limited; and neither has flights after 6:30 P.M. Furthermore, there is confusion over the discount tickets that one of the companies offers to passengers holding full-fare tickets on a connecting flight on any of several domestic and foreign airlines. Few travel agents and airline reservations clerks yet know about these arrangements.

The president of the Arizona American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and four top officials of the Laborers' International Union have been indicted on charges of conspiring to embezzle $350,000 in union funds. The indictment, made public yesterday, accuses the five of establishing a severance fund for officers and business agents of Locals 479 and 383 without authorization from the members.

TWO feet above the Passaic River, 30 million gallons of water an hour take a side trip at Beatties Dam here. Instead of going over the dam, the water is channeled into a canal, tumbles 32 feet down a wide metal pipe and then races through three 51-year-old turbines. What comes out of those turbines is electric power, which the Passaic Valley Water Commission uses to pump water to its customers. The generating plant, which in the 19th century provided mechanical action to turn out rugs at Beatties Carpet Factory, is one of only three in the state producing hydroelectric power. One of the others is owned by the Riegel Products Corporation, a paper mill with facilities on the Musconetcong River in Hunterdon and Warren Counties, and the third by Jersey Central Power & Light.

''I USED to tell my children that this case would see them through college,'' Marvin J. Sonosky, a Washington Indian lawyer, recalled last week. ''Now maybe it will see my grandchildren through college.'' The 72-year-old lawyer was referring to a stunning $10.6 million legal fee that a Federal court awarded him, Arthur Lazarus Jr. William Howard Payne and their respective firms for waging the Sioux Nation's long legal struggle to win just compensation for the Government's seizure of their sacred Black Hills in South Dakota 104 years ago. Mr. Sonosky worked on the Sioux Indian case without getting paid for 24 years. He signed on in late 1956, when tribal leaders hired him and the two other lawyers under contingent-fee contracts. The case came to a conclusion last June, when the Supreme Court upheld a $106 million award to the Sioux. Ten days or so ago, the Court of Claims made the fee award, and the judge's opinion was mailed out last week.

TRENTON COME Tuesday, New Jersey's experiment with the public financing of primary elections will be over, with fewer voters than four years ago expected to go to the polls to pick nominees for Governor from among 13 Democrats and eight Republicans. Despite the expenditure of nearly $6 million in public funds and $4 million in private contributions - the most expensive campaign in state history - surveys taken by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University less than a month before the election found that fewer than 20 percent of enrolled Democrats and Republicans could name even the leading candidates in the two contests. With no statewide issue emerging, the candidates simply presented themselves as best qualified to meet the problems of crime and the economy, identified in voter surveys as the pressing concerns of the day. With no issues such as an income tax or public financing of abortions to separate the candidates, they appeared to run in lockstep, frequently echoing each other in public forums and in position papers. In this atmosphere, the election-financing law, which appeared to have inspired the record field of candidates, was discussed in print and on television at least as much as the candidates' positions were.

Once relegated to basements and left-over spaces, employee eating facilities are being given greater prominence in many new office buildings in the city and the suburbs. ''It's becoming more and more the case for major corporations to address themselves to providing an improved working environment,'' said John J. Kaiser, senior vice president of Cushman & Wakefield, a leasing, sales and management organization. Such concerns, he continued, ''include almost by necessity a comfortable eating facility with reasonable rates,'' and even recreational and cultural facilities, ''after-hours bars,'' and possibly day-care centers for workers' young children. One key reason is the competition for back-office personnel. The corporate cafeteria, according to Jerry L. Cohen of Wm. A. White & Sons, has been a ''stepchild that used to be sandwiched into the back offices,'' but companies are beginning to treat their operations personnel with more ''dignity'' and provide them with more attractive facilities.

AN unemployed man burns his gas-guzzling automobile rather than try to keep up with finance payments and buy gasoline he can no longer afford. A store owner, hard-pressed to pay his suppliers, sets fire to his shop. A teen-ager is charged with arson for setting a fire at a garden apartment, whether for a thrill or because someone paid him to do it. Scenes from the South Bronx? Not according to local lawenforcement officials, who say arson is becoming a more ordinary crime in Long Island communities, carried out by average citizens whose problems - difficulties in paying the mortgage or selling the house - are overwhelming them, so they ''sell it to the insurance company instead.''

Hawaii is not all high-rise hotels and beach-front condominiums. My wife, Beatrice, and I found a wilderness of mountains and forests, a canyon and sheer sea cliffs, in the interior and on the northwest coast of Kauai. This region is a haven for nature lovers, hikers, campers and bird-watchers. There is no golf, tennis, surfing or shopping. Trout fishing - as well as hunting of wild goats, wild pigs and pheasants - is permitted. But the principal activity is absorbing the beauty and solitude of a tropical wilderness. We spent one week of a recent month's tour of Hawaii on Kauai, the ''garden isle'' of the Hawaiian group, exploring this territory by car where possible, on foot where only trails existed, by helicopter where neither wheel nor boot could manuever. Kauai, the most northwesterly of the major islands, is 25 minutes by air from Honolulu. Like the other islands it is volcanic in origin, but all its volcanoes are extinct. Kauai is the oldest, wettest, greenest island and the most wooded; more than half its 350,000 acres are in forest.

The 21 candidates and their campaign themes, page 30. By JOSEPH F. SULLIVAN New Jersey's Democrats and Republicans will choose their candidates for Governor on Tuesday, in the most expensive and most crowded primary election in the state's history. No clear favorite has emerged in either of the primary races in the campaign, which is the first in the state to receive public financing. When all the bills have been paid by the 13 Democrats and eight Republicans, more than $13 million will have been spent - $6 million of it in taxpayer money - making this the most costly election in state history.

STONINGTON CONNECTICUT'S only commercial fishing fleet, which was all but defunct a few years ago, is slowly recovering its vigor at its home port here. Supplementing the small wooden day-boats that have been the fleet's mainstay since World War II, several local fishermen have bought $500,000 steel draggers capable of working the rich Georges Bank area for a week at a time. Using state and Federal grants and the fishermen's own funds, Stonington has begun rehabilitating its pier, part of which collapsed in December 1979. Local officials hope that the fleet will double in size over the next few years, from 17 ocean-going draggers - boats that drag a net behind them underwater - to 35, and increase the landings of fresh fish from 4.2 million pounds last year, including lobsters and scallops, to 10 million pounds. The fleet's renaissance began in 1977, when the United States extended its offshore fishing limit to 200 miles, reducing competition from Japanese, Soviet and other foreign boats. ''Foreign fleets had been raping the source,'' said James Spellman, Stonington's First Selectman.

Blacks have increased in numbers and as a percentage of the total population in the suburbs of most large cities over the last decade, but at the same time whites were moving on to virtually all-white areas of new growth and prosperity, either in the suburban rings or outside the metropolitan areas. An analysis of recently released data from the 1980 census shows that blacks have made inroads since 1970 in many suburbs that had long been considered hostile to them and had been termed the ''white noose'' around the inner city. Many of those suburbs were declining economically and in population growth, even though they may have represented a step up from life in the decaying core cities. Migration Patterns Studied The picture will not be entirely clear until the Census Bureau completes studies of migration patterns, which take into consideration births and deaths as well as the movement of people. Nevertheless, the figures showing where people lived in April 1970 and April 1980 point up some significant changes: - In 38 metropolitan areas with populations of one million or more, the number of blacks living in suburbs grew from 2.3 million in 1970 to 3.7 million in 1980, a 60 percent increase. The black percentage of the total suburban population in those 38 statistical areas increased to 6.5 percent from 4.7 percent.