What was going on when I was born?

Frederick Reed, who has driven trucks for Hemingway Transport Inc. for 23 years, recently got a letter from Richard E. Edwards, the company's president and chief executive officer. ''Events that will occur in the next few weeks will determine whether our company will continue in business or go down the drain into financial ruin,'' the letter began. Then Mr. Edwards outlined to Mr. Reed - and to the 1,500 other drivers and employees at Hemingway, who got the same letter - a series of union concessions that he said would be necessary for the survival of the company, a medium-sized regional trucker that lost $300,000 last year. The concessions he wanted go far beyond those already granted in the National Master Freight Agreement reached between Trucking Management Inc., the industry bargaining group, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. That agreement is now being voted on by union members.

Not long after the Vernon Valley and Great Gorge ski areas opened about a decade ago, Lois and Wheymer South sold their 30 milking cows and all but five of the 130 acres on their farm. The land out beyond their white frame house is fallow now. The barn is idle. The silo is covered with ivy vines and a big sign advertising the ski slopes up Route 94. Near them, Eddie Snook's old barn is now a glistening white and is adorned with the black bunny symbol of the Playboy Hotel across the valley. Playboy's riding horses are stabled in the barn.

The Kansas City Board of Trade, a small commodities exchange that has only traded hard red winter wheat, has been waiting for tomorrow for the past four and a half years. After a breakfast for 300 on the trading floor and remarks by local dignitaries, the opening bell will ring in a new era for the board and for the financial futures market. At 9:30 A.M., central standard time, trading is to begin in stock index futures. The stock index contract, one of the most arcane and most widely debated financial instruments, is being hailed by its promoters as a salvation for large portfolios, whose managers could use the contract to hedge against increasingly volatile stock prices.

Mayor Koch, who announced his candidacy for Governor on Monday with a pledge to represent New York State's urban, rural and suburban interests equally, has declared in a published interview that life in the suburbs is ''sterile.'' ''It's nothing - it's wasting your life,'' Mr. Koch said. In the interview, given last November and December and prepared for the April issue of Playboy magazine, the Mayor also spoke scoffingly of rural life, dismissing the notion that many people prefer living in ''the country.'' Rural Living 'a Joke' Along this line, Mr. Koch was asked about the rigors of urban life, specifically ''the loss of time because of lousy city services, late subways.''

Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve, told Congress he still had doubts about President Reagan's economic program. He said that even if budget deficits were held within current projections, there would be some question whether a sustained recovery was possible. He advised further spending cuts, possibly in the military sector, or deferring the last year of Mr. Reagan's tax cut. (Page D11.) G.O.P. Congressional leaders told the President that his 1983 budget proposal was dead and that they would draft an alternative with the Democrats. (A1.) The nation's leading banks reduced their prime lending rates by half a point, to 16 1/2 percent. Several bankers and economists predicted the prime would drop further in the coming week. Bankers attributed the move to declining rates in the money markets, where they obtain funds for their own use. (D1.)

The New York State chairman of the Liberal Party criticized Mayor Koch yesterday, jeopardizing the Mayor's chances for a party endorsement of his candidacy for Governor. ''I don't like what he stands for,'' said the Rev. Dr. Donald S. Harrington, the state chairman, ''the death penalty, his essentially anti-minority attitude, his anti-U.N. buffoonery, the way he played up to Reagan and the conservatives.'' In the past, Democratic politicians have considered Liberal endorsement essential for statewide candidates; the three current Democratic state officials and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan were elected with Liberal endorsement. Dr. Harrington's attack in a telephone interview came just hours after the Mayor had indicated at a City Hall news conference that he was interested in the Liberal Party endorsement although he had ruled out such an endorsement in his mayoral campaign last year and has frequently criticized the party.

DAWN didn't crack one recent frigid Saturday - it peeped briefly through the clouds and went back to bed. The dozen bird watchers huddled on Long Island's easternmost tip were not so lazy. Up since 5:45 A.M., they continued to scan the frigid Atlantic from their windswept perch at the foot of the Montauk Point lighthouse. ''No one has ever really proved that there are more birds here at dawn,'' said the birders' leader, Robert O. Paxton. ''It's just that Puritan feeling that if you get up early, your virtue will be rewarded.''

STAR By R.W. APPLE Jr. LONDON THEY come from Charolles, a small town in the hills of central France. As youngsters, they tasted the superb gastronomic specialties of the surrounding region - Charolais beef, Beaujolais and Burgundy wines, Bresse chickens, Auvergne cheeses. So it is not surprising that Albert and Michel Roux decided to become chefs. What is surprising is that they chose to pursue their careers in England, which had previously shown a limited appetite for the best French cooking, and that they succeeded so well that they changed the whole character of the restaurant trade in London. There were good French restaurants here before the Roux brothers arrived. But they set out to create great ones, and this year they have received their reward - a third star from the Michelin Guide, the first ever awarded by that august French publication to a restaurant in Britain. In the guide's view, that means that Le Gavroche, the Roux flagship, is as good a restaurant as those of Alain Chapel, Pierre and Jean Troisgros, Michel Guerard and the other French culinary princes.

A controversial Securities and Exchange Commission proposal that would simplify underwriting procedures is being greeted with dismay on Wall Street as it comes up for S.E.C. action Wednesday. The proposal, known as Rule 462A, is part of a package of regulations that would change the rules governing what 9,000 publicly owned companies registered with the agency must disclose in prospectuses. Rule 462A would allow a corporation to file a single registration statement with the S.E.C. that would be good for two years of issuing bonds, stocks and other financing, thus permitting a company to go quickly and directly to market with its issues. The rule would permit major corporations to bypass the investment banking firms that have traditionally handled most offerings.

Orders for new durable goods fell 1.5 percent in January compared with December, the Commerce Department reported today. It was the fifth decline in the past six months, as the recession continued unabated. The decline would have been more than twice as great except for a surge in orders for military goods, a category that has been pushed to a record level by the Reagan Administration's emphasis on military spending.

The Secretary of the Treasury said yesterday he would favor exempting mass-transit programs from a proposed repeal of a Federal tax-leasing law that could cost New York almost half a billion dollars. ''I am definitely in favor of rent-a-bus,'' the Treasury Secretary, Donald T. Regan, said in replying to a question by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan at a Senate Finance Committee hearing in Washington. ''I assume then you're in favor of rent-a-subway, too,'' said Senator Moynihan, a New York Democrat. Mr. Regan said he was. Possible Threat Eased The Treasury Secretary's testimony considerably eased a possible threat to about $480 million in capital improvements for New York City buses and subways scheduled to be financed through tax-leasing arrangements by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The architect I.M. Pei has resigned from the Vivian Beaumont Theater renovation project at Lincoln Center after differences with the acoustician Cyril Harris over the design. Officials of Lincoln Center had tried in recent weeks to reconcile the differences, over an interior renovation expected to cost $6.5 million, and last Thursday Mr. Pei and Mr. Harris were reported to be working them out. But the two experts were apparently unable to reach agreement on a design that would meet both Mr. Pei's esthetic requirements and Mr. Harris's acoustical requirements. A successor to Mr. Pei was not named yesterday, but architects reported likely to be approached include Philip Johnson, the original architect of the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Johnson and his partner, John Burgee, are now working with Mr. Harris on the renovation of that theater and worked with him on the 1976 reconstruction of Avery Fisher Hall.