What was going on when I was born?

HARTFORD LAST week, more than three decades after he heard his first case as a 26-year-old judge on the Torrington Municipal Court, John A. Speziale became the 32d Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. Justice Speziale, a member of the high court since 1977, succeeded Joseph W. Bogdanski, who, having reached mandatory retirement age of 70, will leave the court Thursday to become a trial referee. With the assumption of his new duties, Justice Speziale has turned over the administration of the court system, a role that had earned him a reputation as a deft, if somewhat authoritarian, manager, to Superior Court Judge Maurice J. Sponzo of Hartford. Judge Sponzo, a longtime friend of Justice Speziale, has until now, been Deputy Chief Court Administrator.

Democracy, for all its virtues, often frustrates those who seek a clear and consistent meaning in its expression. So it was last week when gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia produced a surprisingly large Democratic victory in a Republican state and a razor-thin Republican victory in a Democratic one. If the race in New Jersey, between Republican Thomas H. Kean and his Democratic opponent, Representative James J. Florio, was too close to call before the voting, it remained officially so after it. Mr. Kean, who advocated a Reagan-style package of state tax and spending cuts, led by just 1,726 votes over Mr. Florio, who had opposed the reductions. But with 2.28 million ballots, it was hardly the kind of margin out of which victory speeches are fashioned.

Southeast Asia has been a focus of war, of violent changes of regime and of direct and indirect involvement of outside powers. Yet despite the convulsions that followed the temporary end of the Indochina wars in 1975, a correspondent who has spent most of the last 12 years in this region leaves impressed with a constant amid the turmoil. What has not changed is the continuing rise, however uneven in many aspects, of the standard of living and the state of peace in the countries of the region that reject Communism, while the three Communist countries are mired in war, social upheaval and economic stagnation or decline. Economic Floors and Ceilings Rise Foreigners visiting this city, Manila or Jakarta, Indonesia, for the first time will be impressed with the prevalence of luxury cars in settings of poverty. Those who have known Southeast Asia over a longer period, however, will note that in addition to the economic injustice evidenced by this conspicuous consumption in the midst of penury, there is ample proof that the floor has risen for the many while the ceiling has gone higher for the few.

A BETTER CLASS OF PERSON An Autobiography. By John Osborne. 285 pp. New York: E.P. Dutton. $13.75. ''HAPPINESS,'' John Osborne wrote in his notebooks in 1954, ''means not looking back.'' Two years later, his play ''Look Back in Anger'' wiped the smugness off the frivolous face of English theater. Osborne was a heavyweight hater. His malicious wit and fulminating tirades blazed a trail for English drama. By lacerating the tame and timid world of his parents Osborne became the daring, romantic voice of a new generation's rebellion. His play was aptly compared to Noel Coward's ''The Vortex'' (1924), which also extended the limits of what was theatrically acceptable. ''We both wrote about what we knew and didn't like,'' Coward said later. ''Mine was a more circumspect dislike. Everything bothers him. It may be a sign of the times.'' It was; and, when times changed, the sinew of Osborne's writing turned to flab. Then, like Coward, the renegade became a roast beef Tory.

Many leading private economists say that the long-predicted recession has taken hold of the economy so strongly in the last month that they have begun to doubt whether President Reagan's recovery program will ever get off the ground. Many of them have revised their economic forecasts for the next year sharply downward. The economists, who work in Wall Street, universities and private concerns, say the latest economic indicators appear to foreshadow a Christmas season that will provide little in the way of economic good cheer. Although some on Wall Street look to the recession to produce the long-awaited decline in short-@ and long-term interest rates, which has already begun, many economists argue that this phenomenon could be short-lived.

HUNTSVILLE, Tex. P LAYING conditions were miserable that entire Saturday. Rain and cold penetrated sweaters and slacks down to the skin. It was impossible to keep the grips of the golf clubs dry, however thoroughly they were wiped. Players soaked up three and four towels and exhausted their supplies of dry gloves. A few times the clubs flew, or nearly flew, from the hands of players, including Skip Dunaway's. His visor did not fully protect his eyeglasses; constantly he had to wipe them with his handkerchief. Dunaway was fighting a cold, and he carried a bottle of Coricidin in the ball pocket of his golf bag. Dunaway was having a harder time than many others: He had to slog from his golf car to his ball, cleaning mud from the ball, carrying clubs, putting them back in the bag, replacing the hood - all those caddying chores repeated all day long. Dunaway got here with less than $150 in pocket money and he could not afford the $175 to $200 that a caddie would have cost for the week in this remote spot 100 miles north of Houston. He figured a caddie could have saved him two or three strokes in that one round alone.

None of the players in Friday's free-agent draft can expect to receive as much money as Dave Winfield will earn from his historic free-agent contract. But Winfield, who agreed to a second contract six weeks after he signed the first because of what George Steinbrenner called a ''misunderstanding,'' can expect to receive nearly the same amount he would have under the original contract he signed with the Yankees. That misunderstanding stemmed from the cost-of-living clause in the 10-year contract. However, based on contract details learned from various baseball sources, the maximum value of the second contract is only $838,631 less than the maximum value of the original.

Apattern is emerging in cable television service across the United States. Large companies that own cable systems, eager to win franchises in unwired cities, are quite willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build modern systems. At the same time, they give much lower priority to rebuilding their older systems in areas where there are no competitive reasons to offer the more lavish services. Take New York City. It may be the communications capital of the world, but you wouldn't know it by the quality of its cable television service. Of the city's five boroughs, four remain unwired for cable. The fifth, Manhattan, is served by two companies, Teleprompter (uptown) and Manhattan Cable (downtown). But while both systems are required by their franchise agreements to provide subscribers the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art systems, neither one does. Nor do the parent companies of Teleprompter and Manhattan Cable sense any contradiction in promising far more elaborate systems to potential subscribers just across the river. Both companies are among the competitors for franchises due to be awarded by the city next month in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx.

FRUSTRATION over service on the Long Island Rail Road has led a bipartisan group of state legislators to press for a law that would create a separate state authority to oversee the operation of the beleaguered commuter line. What chance the measure has of passing both houses of the State Legislature and then winning the approval of Governor Carey is not known. The railroad, which relies heavily on state financial support, is under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, an umbrella agency that oversees the New York City subways and buses, bridges and tunnels and the commuter rail lines. The M.T.A. was formed in 1965, when it took over the bankrupt L.I.R.R. Although the bill is being sponsored by State Senator James J. Lack, Republican of East Northport, and Assemblymen Lewis J. Yevoli of Old Bethpage and I. William Bianchi Jr. of Bellport, both Democrats, it does not have the support of the Nassau County Executive, Francis T. Purcell; the Suffolk County Executive, Peter F. Cohalan, or the Queens Borough President, Donald R. Manes.

PORT CHESTER THE telephone rattles the walls in the house on King Street: - ''Person-to-person for Mr. Marks from Mr. Billy Johnson in Montreal.'' - ''Person-to-person for Mr. Marks. Mr. Richard Caster calling from Washington.'' - ''Hello, Irving? This is Richard Todd.'' Irving Marks, 33 years old, is living his lifelong fantasy here. Athletes call him, depend on him, want him around.

HACKENSACK ''IT'S beginning to feel very, very lonely,'' confided Doris Mahalick as she assessed the results of last Tuesday's election. Mrs. Mahalick, a member and former director of the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders, won re-election last year and was not a candidate this year. But Tuesday's polling results left her disappointed, although apparently not dispirited. Those results - which, unlike those of the statewide gubernatorial vote, were clear and unequivocal - will make her the only Democrat on the incoming nine-member county board. Thomas H. Kean, the Republican candidate for Governor, won a 28,000-vote plurality in Bergen County. Riding with him to victory were three Republican Freeholder candidates.

HOBOKEN FOR MOST people who live on the clean, tree-lined streets of Hoboken's brownstone revival neighborhoods, life is comfortable. The homes are well kept and an air of a community is on the rise. But for many residents of the city's less-fashionable tenements, fear, not comfort, is their constant companion. Standing outside the five-story tenement in which she lives, Brigita Rodriguez said: ''I have three children, and I'm afraid for them. Me and my husband, I don't care so much, but our children -they're afraid.'' And with good reason. On Oct. 24, the building next door, at 1202 12th Street, caught fire at 4 A.M. Within two hours, 11 of its 21 tenants, including seven children who once played with Mrs. Rodriguez's youngsters, were dead.