What was going on when I was born?

For the past three months William Stark, a 35-year-old accountant, has been experiencing what he considers to be something of a nightmare. Because he could not find a buyer for his ranch-style home in suburban Detroit, he did not have enough cash to purchase a home near his new job in Stamford. So he has been living in a motel room in Fairfield and visiting his family four days a month. He was afraid to leave the Detroit house empty or to rent it because he believed he would have a harder time selling in the end. So he commuted and finally sold the house last week for $43,600, or $22,000 below what the agents originally had suggested as an asking price. Potential buyers are finding the going equally tough. Cathy and Gary Olsen are among hundreds of young couples who have temporarily had to give up hope of buying a home.

POLITICIANS and voters searching for lessons from the primary elections across Connecticut last Tuesday might consider at least three: 1. Never underestimate the pulling power of an incumbent. 2. Don't overestimate the importance of an endorsement from a party organization. 3. Don't underestimate the ability of a black or minority candidate to mobilize a strong vote, especially in the larger cities long controlled by whites. Primary elections, especially to choose candidates for municipal offices, are usually decided on such things as local issues and personalities and the ability of candidates to get their supporters to the polls in what is normally a relatively light voter turnout.

IT started earlier this summer with a little red spot on the boy's cheek. No one thought anything of it - until weeks after he had left Fire Island for camp in New England. Then, suddenly, the 11-year-old fell ill with flu-like symptoms and had to be hospitalized for arthritic pains. Lyme disease had struck again. Named for the Connecticut shoreline community where it came to attention in 1975, the nonfatal skin, muscle and joint disease, which is believed to be spread by ticks, has since turned up on Long Island, elsewhere along the East Coast and in other spots across the nation. This summer's cases on Fire Island have been linked to ticks carried by a herd of deer on the island's Federal preserve, but the bloodsucking parasites are also said to be carried by mice and perhaps household pets.

Every Little Bit Helps In much the same way they treated his immediate predecessor, nervous financial markets have forced Ronald Reagan to reassess his budget proposals. However, it may not take much to placate investors. Allen Sinai of Data Resources says that if further cuts keep next year's deficit between $45 billion and $50 billion, they would have a calming effect on the credit markets. So too would an easing of the Federal Reserve's tough monetary policy, which in the past has always been relaxed in the face of slack economic conditions.

CHICAGO C OULD Sears, Roebuck & Company, that giant of American retail chains, finally be rising from a long deep sleep? For five years, Sears seemed to mark time. Its customers drifted off to livelier competitors, and profits sagged under the weight of an overloaded management staff. In recent months, however, traffic has been picking up in the 800 stores and the mail order rooms of the country's biggest retailer. Some of the old serenity has returned to the executive corridors of the Sears Tower, following a rash of company-sponsored early retirements that wiped out a whole layer of middle management and some senior officers as well. Profits are growing once again. And confident now that it has finally mended its traditional businesses, Sears is again moving into ventures that, management hopes, will get the company growing again. ''The elements of a turnaround seem to be in place,'' says Joseph Ellis, a Goldman, Sachs analyst. Sears' reprieve from bad times comes at a time when other large retail chains are under increasing stress. K mart, which grew phenomenally in the 1970's, and Montgomery Ward, owned by Mobil, have been struggling recently.

President Reagan announced today that he would trim his projections for military spending by $20 billion to $21 billion in the next three years to help meet his goal of balancing the Federal budget by 1984. In a hastily scheduled announcement this evening, David R. Gergen, the senior White House spokesman, said Mr. Reagan reached the decision on military spending yesterday with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and David A. Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Gergen said Mr. Weinberger had not determined which programs might be affected to achieve the saving. But he said the decision would not affect ''strategic weapons planning.'' Aim to Cut at Least $20 Bi llion The new Defense Department cuts are aimed at reducing by $20 billion to $21 billion the level of authorized military spending between now and 1984.

In the 79-year history of the Yankees, only six pitchers have thrown no-hitters against them. Bob Ojeda, a 23-year-old rookie for the Boston Red Sox, came within one inning of becoming the seventh yesterday. Ojeda held the Yankees hitless until Rick Cerone led off the ninth inning with a pinch-hit line drive that soared just out of the reach of a lungingDwight Evans in right-center field. The hit went for a double, and when Dave Winfield followed with another pinch-hit double, Mark Clear relieved Ojeda and preserved a 2-1 victory for the Red Sox.

Physically, he stood about five feet tall in his caribou-skin boots. His hands were dark and wide, the fingers scarred, the thick nails nicked and bent. His face, heavily lined, was free of expression as it peered from under the peak of a battered baseball cap. But the old eyes, even behind bifocals, were sharp and clear. "This is Snowbird," said the park ranger, "he'll be your guide." We were standing in the crisp Canadian snow outside Fort Chipewyan in the isolated northeastern corner of Alberta, about to depart on a four-day, 103-mile-long circular expedition into the subarctic wilderness by dogsled. The trip was part of a whole new parcel of wilderness excursions being organized in the area to introduce small numbers of adventurous tourists to Canada's magnificent north and, not coincidentally, to pump needed income into native pockets.

''Within 90 days,'' said Robert H. Michel last week, ''something's got to give.'' The House Minority Leader's specific reference was to record-high interest rates. What followed gave some hint of another complaint. ''I'm a political creature,'' Mr. Michel continued, ''and our political futures (require) there's got to be some movement before spring.''

The Reagan Administration is struggling to decipher an apparent and annoying contradiction: Why, if Mr. Reagan has done so much for business, isn't its applause rolling in? Why, if Wall Street supported his tax cuts, budget cuts and restrictive monetary policies, is the Street now so critical of the Reagan program and driving down the values of stocks and bonds? Part of the explanation emerges from comments by a broad range of Wall Street figures. This is that the Reagan program did in fact give most of what it wanted to Wall Street - that assemblage of stockbrokers and bond dealers, bankers, investment counselors, financial economists, investors, traders, speculators, corporate treasurers and chief executives who buy and sell securities. But the comments show that Wall Street also woke up with more than it expected, and that ''extra'' has revived fears of Federal deficits running out of control.

STONY BROOK WHAT Edward Johannemann, director of the Long Island Archeological Project at the State University at Stony Brook, characterizes as a 3,000-year-old weapons factory is being excavated in the Stony Brook area. The site, d iscovered last November during an envir onment al impact study, appears to have been a chipping station where quart z lance points, scrapers and knives were manufactured. In addition , it may also have contained a men's house. ''In almost all primitive societies, there is one place for men only to gather,'' Mr. Johannemann said. ''This has that same air to it. We see very little evidence of the woman here - very little pottery, no evidence of cooking.''

DETAILED engineering reports on 44 of the 104 vehicular bridges spanning commuter railroad lines throughout the state confirm what the Department of Transportation and NJ Transit have suspected since they took over the bankrupt carriers: Most are in extremely poor condition. The reports, the first to be completed by the Transportation Department's consultants, recommend zero load ratings for eight of the bridges, thus making them candidates for closure or weightcarrying restrictions. One of them, the Roseville Avenue bridge over NJ Transit's Morristown branch in Newark, already has been barricaded. The consultants also reported that 27 of the spans inspected were in poor or marginal condition and recommended that 15 of them be replaced. Only 13 of the 44 met the state's minimum load ratings.