What was going on when I was born?

Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis said yesterday that if Mayor Koch and Governor Carey submitted a joint request, he would approve a plan to trade in Federal funds earmarked for the Westway for use on mass transit. In a letter to Mayor Koch, Mr. Lewis said for the first time that the 4.2-mile underground highway along landfill on the West Side of Manhattan would be considered ''nonessential'' to a unified and connected interstate highway sys- New York City officials, fearing that some taxes to aid mass transit might be difficult to collect, have proposed changes in them. Page B3. tem and that he would ''therefore approve a request if one were submitted.''

Clyde Woody, who has lived in the historic black neighborhood here for 36 years, was chatting recently about the latest offer for his two-and-a-half-story house. ''A white man came by the other day and offered something in the 60's for it,'' recalled Mr. Woody, a retired auto worker, as he sat on the narrow portico of the white clapboard house at 13 Green Street. ''I told him I wasn't interested. He asked would I be interested if the offer was in the 70s. I told him no because, I've got nowhere else to go.'' Mr. Woody is one of a number of black homeowners in the area known as Witherspoon-Jackson who in recent years have been offered sizable sums for their homes by whites.

The American auto industry had only modest hopes for 1981, after a disastrous year in which the domestic producers lost more than $4 billion. Sales, they said, would increase to 10 million cars from 8.9 million in 1980. Even that goal has been unattainable so far this year, and analysts are now saying that the industry will be lucky to sell more than 9 million cars. The only time when sales exceeded 10 million on an annual basis was in February and March, when profit-sapping rebates were in effect.

A map of Minnesota yesterday incorrectly labeled the river that forms Minnesota's border with Wisconsin in the southern sector of both states. It is the Mississippi.

President Reagan has privately assured black leaders that he will not cripple the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but at the same time Administration officials are cutting back civil rights enforcement by the Justice Department and weakening the regulations against racial discrimination in employment. Administration officials and civil rights leaders acknowledge these developments as the major components in a Reagan Administration civil rights policy that seems to be evolving. Under this policy, Mr. Reagan is publicly reaffirming his philosophical commitment to black rights while enforcement agencies turn away from such remedies as busing, lawsuits and affirmative-action programs that the Government has used to fight racial discrimination. Confusion and Fear Among Blacks Mr. Reagan's apparent shift in favor of extending the Voting Rights Act is part of an Administration political offensive against what Arthur A. Fletcher, a black Republican invited to the White House last week, called ''the inordinate fear that is pervading the black community'' since Mr. Reagan took office. But the President's remark that he was having second thoughts about his earlier position that the Voting Rights Act ought to cover all 50 states caused confusion among his black guests and some Administration officials.

The New York City Police Department, which had eliminated almost all investigations of residential burglaries, will set up special burglary units in every precinct within the next five months. William J. Devine, the first deputy police commissioner, said the program was approved by the department yesterday. It calls for each precinct to have uniformed officers, trained in latent-fingerprinting techniques, assigned to a patrol car devoted exclusively to investigating residential or small commercial burglaries. All told, 600 officers will take part in the program.

For the first time in the Soviet bloc, a Communist party has decided to elect its entire leadership by secret ballot with a choice of contenders. The delegates at the emergency congress of the Polish Communist Party also voted to expel seven former high officials from the party. They include Edward Gierek, the party leader who was ousted last year during labor strikes after 10 years in power, and six of his associates. At the same time, a campaign appeared under way to undermine the standing of Stanislaw Kania, who succeeded Mr. Gierek as party leader, and the party congress seemed to be turning into a behindthe-scenes struggle between liberals and conservatives.

Shaken in spirit, riot-weary Britons have begun the tortuous process of debating what has gone wrong in a society from whose special qualities of civility the troubled nation drew a measure of pride through the worst of its economic battering. In corner pubs, in places of work, in countless television discussions and in long letters to newspapers, the arguments have been conducted. Thus far, from all appearances, the main result has been to further divide a nation polarized socially for centuries and polarized politically by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's stringent economic policies. ''If you walk into any shop or sit at any bus stop, everyone is talking about it,'' said Alan MacDonald, a young banker. ''They all have different attitudes.''

New York City's Chief Medical Examiner said yesterday that the deaths of two mental patients at state hospitals and that of another at a city hospital during last week's spell of 90-degree weather were heat-related. The three patients were in wards that were not air-conditioned and two of them were in wards that, for safety reasons, had only small window openings. In addition, the three were receiving anti-psychotic drugs that lowered their ability to stand the heat, doctors familiar with the cases said. The Medical Examiner, Dr. Elliot M. Gross, said all three patients had registered high body temperatures and that their cause of death was ''heat related,'' but that a final determination must await further investigation.

The House Ways and Means Committee, in its continuing effort to put together its own tax package, today approved changes in estate and gift taxes that would be more generous than those already voted by the Senate Finance Committee. Today's vote by the House committee appears to make virtually certain a significant reduction in estate and gift taxes, although the House and Senate have yet to vote on the final tax measures. The two committees have maintained that the reductions are meant to offset the effects of inflation and, in some cases, to help owners of farms and other small businesses. In a telephone call to Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., President Reagan requested that the House complete action on both budget cuts and tax cuts before leaving on its scheduled August recess. Mr. O'Neill agreed to delay the recess by a week until Aug. 7, if necessary, to obtain completion of the tax package. (Page A17.)

Just two summers ago, when the big white elevators alongside the Santa Fe main line here were groaning with the weight of a fat harvest, Sherm Baird could not beg or borrow a railroad hopper car to move the grain to market. So, like many elevator operators throughout the Grain Belt, Mr. Baird reached a decision: If the railroads could not come up with the cars, he would get some of his own. Mr. Baird, an employee of Garden City Co-op here, went out last year and leased 10 jumbo hopper cars on a five-year contract. But this summer, all of that has changed. The shortage of hopper cars has suddenly become a glut, and Mr. Baird and hundreds of other grain dealers now find themselves stuck with a huge fleet of expensive grain cars that are spending most of this summer's harvest parked empty and unused on rail sidings throughout the Middle West and the High Plains.

''Even when poor, England felt a sense of self-respect. That's not here anymore.''