What was going on when I was born?

Alex Nixon's grandfather was a carpenter and he gave the boy his first set of tools. By the age of 17 Mr. Nixon had restored an English surrey, built a four-poster bed and helped reconstruct two barns on his parents' property. But it wasn't until two years ago that he took on anything so formidable as the renovation of a brownstone. A contractor had had the job of renovating his cooperative apartme nt in another building, but the work had proved unsatisfactory and expensive. He was determined th at next time things would be different. Mr. Nixon, a 30-year-old businessman, had the tools. And he had a shelf full of how-to books. All he needed was the lumber. He found one lumber yard easily in his own Manhattan neighborhood - Dykes Lumber Company, which has had a yard at 348 West 48th Street since 1912.

In the darkened wings of the Parker Playhouse, James Earl Jones is ''becoming'' Othello for the 150th time in five months. Resplendent in his gold-shot velvet caftan, ''the noble Moor'' is thinking of the battles he has fought, of Aleppo, of Suleiman the Turk who remains to be conquered. At the same time, the actor is aware that with sevenand-a-half weeks left in this nine-city tour before opening night on Broadway, he still feels not so much in command of his role as in search of it. And James Earl Jones wouldn't have it any other way. ''Every performance,'' he has said, ''is one more chance to explore something. That, to me, is what acting is all about.'' This production, which co-stars Christopher Plummer as Iago, began last August at the American Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Conn. It opens at the Winter Garden on Wednesday and marks the sixth time that Mr. Jones has played the role. The last time, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1970, he told a reporter, ''I'll be 40 for this Othello and I still want a crack when I'm 50. You need a great deal of emotional maturity to come to grips with him. You have to start working on the part when you're young so that you can work up to a full comprehension of the man.''

TRENTON GOVERNOR KEAN'S p lans to reduce the size of the New Jersey bureacracy wi ll be reversed if Congress approves President Reagan's proposal to s end $47 billion in Federal categorical grant programs back to the s tates. Mr. Kean, who campaigned on a promise to eliminate some state departments and agencies i f a study showed th em to be unnecessary, acknowledged last week in the wake of the Pre sident's State of the Union address that the state government would have to expand to be able to administer the programs that could be sent down from Washington. However, he made it clear that his support for the Reagan program -which he called a ''bold initiative''-would be contingent on receiving enough money to both run the programs and cover the increased administrative costs. ''I would campaign very strongly, directly and through the state's delegation, against enactment of the program unless the money comes along with the added responsibilities,'' he said.

LOIS AND MARK BARTON of Bellport are in danger of becoming obsolete. Not in their respective careers; so far, there are still openings for research librarians and nuclear physicists. Rather, their avocations are threatened. For both are skilled musicians who satisfy their artistic souls by playing in a community orchestra. And on the Island, the true community orchestra made up of talented amateurs who play for the sheer love of playing is beginning to go the way of the Edsel and the 10-cent stamp. The orchestras, once an integral part of suburban cultural life and in many communities the only cultural life for musicians and audiences alike, are responding to external and internal pressures, gradually giving way to semiprofessional operations. Some orchestras are even heading toward full professional status.

MANY Westchester organizations will observe February's national celebration of Black History Month with an outpouring of films, concerts, lectures and special events. Films documenting the achievements of all-black military regiments and lectures delivered by prominent black leaders are a few of the events that will make up an almost daily celebration of black style and history in various locations countwide. Many of the activities will be sponsored by the White Plains-based Afro-American Cultural Foundation in its monthlong 14th annual ''Afro-American Panorama.'' The theme for this year's Panorama is ''The Black Kaleidoscope,'' emphasizing ''the multifaceted aspects of the black community'' in Westchester. The foundation was formed, according to its directors, to eliminate what they termed the distorted portrayal of black people, their history, culture and economics. The foundation provides a speaker's bureau, books, economic-development advice and other services to organizations in the county.

DESPITE the ''voluntary'' import quotas on Japanese cars and the reluctance of the average American consumer to buy any car last year, foreign manufacturers again increased their share of the American automobile market in 1981. Although sales of both domestic and imported cars fell in 1981, import sales fell proportionately less. Almost 80 percent of the imported cars were Japanese, and some of the Japanese companies even reported gains both in sales and their shares of the market. A year ago, analysts were predicting a total United States market of about 9.5 million cars, a quarter of them imported. Instead, the year brought only 8.5 million new-car sales, and the foreign share rose from 26.69 percent in 1980 to 27.25 percent. Five years ago, imports represented only 18.26 percent of the American market.

Wilfred Benitez gave Roberto Duran a sample of his versatility tonight as he retained his World Boxing Council junior middleweight title with a unanimous 15-round decision. Duran, 30 years old, suffered his third loss in 77 pro fights, and remained noncommittal on his future. But when asked for an opinion, Carlos Eleta, Duran's manager, said, ''I think he should retire.'' Later, leaving a postfight party, Eleta, a Panamanian industrialist, said he and Duran had talked and added: ''I'm going to retire him.''

''RESEARCH is what makes a university a university,'' says Barbara Selick Dawson, news service director at Rutgers, the State University. And Allen J. Sinisgalli, Princeton's director of research and project administration, says matter-of-factly: ''Our major programs live or die with outside funding.'' What exactly is university research? And why is it so important? Eighty percent of all basic research - the bedrock intellectual foundation upon which applied research and product manufacturing depends -is currently done on college campuses, Mr. Sinisgali says. University research, he explains, is, ''a group of individual projects and how they build up.'' At Princeton last year, projects paid for by outside sources built up to about $100 million, or 25 percent of the university's annual income.

An agreement to sell President Reagan's house in Los Angeles collapsed suddenly two weeks ago after a savings and loan executive discovered two sets of closing papers bearing different sale prices. Both documents apparently included the signature of Mr. Reagan's attorney, Roy D. Miller. Mr. Miller and Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel, say that the papers bearing the higher sale price were improperly altered to include Mr. Miller's signature. Mr. Fielding said this was a forgery. Both men say they do not know who was responsible. For tax reasons, it would have been advantageous to the President to have the lower price as the official one. On the other hand, the prospect ive p urchasers, a group of Western businessmen, would have gained a pote ntial tax advantage by having the higher price.

Millions of people are unemployed, the automobile and housing industries are suffering, the economic slump is troubling all sorts of people and business, but through it all the Manhattan commercial real estate market is holding its own. By nearly all accounts the market has remained strong in the last year, even though the rapid escalation of rents from 1978 through 1980 slowed. Rents in the prime locations remained high and space is hard to come by in the better buildings, the specialists said. At the same time, brokers say they are meeting tenant resistance to new lease terms. They also say they are finding some hesitancy to make space commitments in an uncertain economic climate.

Quite suddenly, a still young and very special company is on the threshold of another American success story. In its current season atthe City Center, the Dance Theater of Harlem has visibly taken a dramatic turn -in more ways than one. For the first time, it has emphasized dance-dramas over neo-classical pl otless ballets among its premieres. In doing so, it has proclaimed a pronounced shift in its artistic policy. The company may never abandon the heritage of George Balanchine ballets with which it began - a legacy reflected in its production of ''Serenade,'' with its diagonal of dancers unreelingly so beautifully this year. But it appears that in the 1980's, Dance Theater of Harlem will also be associated with new dramatic images - such as Lowell Smith as Stanley Kowalski in red silk pajamas pursuing his Blanche du Bois along a quite different diagonal in Valerie Bettis's ''A Streetcar Named Desire.''

A Colombian couple and their two infant children were slain execution-style early yesterday in an automobile on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens. The resulting investigation led the police to more than $10 million worth of cocaine and nearly $1 million in cash in an expensive Jamaica Estates apartment, authorities said. The killings occurred at 2:10 A.M. near Union Turnpike at the southern end of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Forest Hills, according to Deputy Chief Michael Willis, commander of Queens detectives. The site was about two miles from where the family lived.