What was going on when I was born?

AS if it didn't have enough worries of its own, Pan American World Airways is now fighting to dispel the ghost of Braniff International. Shades of the now-bankrupt airline seem to be almost everywhere. The three men charged with the task of rescuing beleaguered Pan Am - C. Edward Acker, John J. Casey and Russell Thayer - are all former presidents of Braniff. And Pan Am's advertising agency is none other than Wells, Rich, Greene, which was responsible for Braniff's jellybean-colored planes in the 1960's, and whose chairman, Mary Wells, just happens to be married to Harding Lawrence, who for 15 years was Braniff's chief executive. Such coincidences have not escaped the notice of Pan Am's employees, particularly those at corporate headquarters. ''Welcome to Bran Am,'' quipped a secretary on the 46th floor of the airline's Park Avenue offices, reflecting the gallows humor that might be expected at a company struggling for survival and one that has so many personal ties with the first major American carrier to go under.

The summer solstice has passed and the sound of the music festival is now heard in the land. A distinct and unmistakable sound, like the muffled beating of drums, it emanates from the offices of impresarios and publicity directors. It is insistent and not to be ignored, obviously sending important messages of some sort. But what messages? What may we hope to learn from, say, this year's commemorative celebrations in behalf of Stravinsky and Haydn? Perhaps very little beyond the obvious fact that the promoters of summer concert series, now generically and indiscriminately called festivals, are in constant need of a theme around which to build their programs. From an educational standpoint, neither of those composers can be said to be in need of exposure. They both are, in fact, popular entertainers, using the words in their best and most respectable senses.

Bobby Clampett nearly gave away the British Open today, but luckily for him no one took it. That could happen Sunday in the final round, because half a dozen players were within four strokes of him. After five holes, the 22-year-old Clampett had a seven-stroke lead in what appeared to be a runaway. But by the end of the day, he was leading by only one, and the tournament was competitive again. The leader in the first two rounds, Clampett lost six strokes to par, three on the par-5 sixth hole. He finished with a 78 in the third round at the Royal Troon Golf Club for a total of 211, five under for 54 holes.

MINEOLA WHEN Alice Brown of Merrick graduated from Molloy College's nursing school recently, she received job offers from four hospitals on Long Island. The personnel directors at two of the hospitals called so often while she was considering their proposals, she said, that she was tempted to take her phone off the hook. In the end, she passed up all the local offers to take a job in a hospital in Houston. Miss Brown's decision illustrates a growing problem for Long Island hospitals - the recruiting of nurses. Out of 1,000 graduates this year from the six nursing schools on the Island (Molloy, Adelphi, Stony Brook, Nassau Community, Farmingdale, Southampton), 600 have left the Island. In addition, the number of nursing graduates from Long Island institutions has been steadily declining. According to Edward Smith, a spokesman for the Nassau County Medical Center in East Meadow, the number of nurse graduates in New York State last year was 10,000, as compared with 14,000 three years ago, and the number graduated on the Island dropped to an approximate total of 1,000 from 1,400 three years ago.

Some of the most expensive apartments in Manhattan are taking shape on the top floors of the Barbizon Hotel at 63d Street and Lexington Avenue and will go on the market Aug. 2. The 18th to 22d floors of the hotel have been divided into four condominiums.

A Third Dip in G.N.P. The June swoon, which sent virtually all of the economy's important components into a nosedive, has made it likely that Wednesday's preliminary report on the second quarter's gross national product will show a decline, and not the six-tenths of 1 percent increase that had been projected by the Commerce Department in last month's ''flash'' estimate. The difference between the flash figure and the preliminary figures is generally slight, but an unexpected plunge in June retail sales and inventories could have driven output for the quarter five-tenths of 1 percent below first-quarter levels, according to Otto Eckstein, president of Data Resources, the economic forecasting firm. Although he expects the tax cut to generate a recovery of sorts in the third quarter, Mr. Eckstein said that July sales thus far show little evidence of it. With interest rates high, the dollar strong and business confidence weak, personal consumption and a slow buildup in inventories will have to lead the second-half recovery, Mr. Eckstein said. But like most of his colleagues, Mr. Eckstein does not expect the next rebound to match other post-recession recoveries. The tepid second-half rise could mean that real G.N.P. this year will decline by 1.4 percent from 1981 levels, Mr. Eckstein said.

IN the high-risk world of the movies, where millions are gambled on t he fickleness of public taste, there is nothing so comforting as a h it. Only one film in 10 ever makes it to that exaulted rank, and e ven fewer become blockbuster hits -those that gross, say, $40 m illion or more. Given these razor-slim chances, Hollywood of late h as begun to churn out more new movies based on old hits than at any t ime in recent memory. Whether it is ''Jaws II,'' ''Rocky III,'' ' 'Psycho II'' or ''Airplane II,'' Hollywood hopes that when the dice r oll again, a sequel will better the odds. Sequels are really a story of modern Hollywood economics. Even though this summer has set box office records, the sky-high cost of movie making has increased the penalty of a flop, breeding caution in an industry still reeling from such expensive failures as United Artists' $36 million ''Heaven's Gate.'' With today's films, on average, costing $11.3 million each to produce - and that's before the studio spends millions more for marketing and distribution - movie makers see sequels as a way to lure the public with bait it has swallowed before.

THE IMPERIOUS ECONOMY By David P. Calleo. 265 pp. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press. $17.50. IN his campaign, Ronald Reagan promised to use the Presidency to reverse the stunning decline of American power that marked the 1970's. Humiliation at the hands of the Iranian hostage-takers, helplessness to prevent the Soviet Union from becoming a formidable military power, impotence in the face of the brutal Soviet counterinsurgency drive into Afghanistan and chronic refusal by America's allies to share the world view of official Washington all seemingly demonstrated the need for a vigorous reassertion of American will. Mr. Reagan held out a nostalgic vision of an America once more supreme, confident and effective in projecting its might in the world. The problem was simple: The United States had grown slack, become confused about the righteousness of its cause and let down its guard.

ALTHOUGH the censorship of books in the United States has risen sharply since 1980, there have been few reported challenges to socalled controversial reading materials in New Jersey. ''Either people there (in New Jersey) are very tolerant, or there is a great deal of self-censorship being exercised,'' said Judith Krug, executive director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. The association is based in Chicago, and the office monitors censorship attempts in public and school libraries throughout the country. A thousand cases of censorship were reported to Mrs. Krug's office in 1981. These represented a threefold increase from the late 1970's to early 1980, she said.

A multimillion-dollar heroin and cocaine industry on the Lower East Side, flourishing openly in vacant city-owned buildings that drug dealers have converted into private fortresses, has grown so intractable that New York City plans to begin tearing down the buildings. For years, the illegal drug trade has served neighborhood addicts and buyers from out of state. An estimated $100 million a year has changed hands, and efforts by the police to control the drug dealing have been futile. A special unit created by the police in September 1980 made thousands of arrests, but few defendants went to prison because of the difficulties of obtaining evidence that would stand up in court. Use of narcotics and the crimes associated with it plague other areas of the city as well, giving the police one of their worst problems. But the police say the Lower East Side neighborhood may now have become the busiest center of heroin and cocaine trafficking.

PORT JEFFERSON WHILE evening lights glow on Port Jefferson Harbor, Capt. Hank Olsen maneuvers his 45-foot charter boat with 15 divers on board out into Long Island Sound. The Sound's cool, deep waters, the territory of flounder, striped bass and lobster, one of the most sought-after diving treasures, are being explored more and more, especially by sportsmen looking for inexpensive alternatives to diving the coral reefs of the Caribbean. And the wide spectrum of wildlife in the Sound is attracting new enthusiasts and turning up some pleasant surprises. ''Long Island divers often took their backyards for granted, assuming the Sound was too murky for a good dive,'' said Stan Roeden, an instructor with the Port Diver, a diving shop in Port Jefferson Station. ''Now they're finding the visibility is better than expected, and there's a huge spectrum of wildlife right outside their back door.''

Arab governments, divided and nearly paralyzed over the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, were plunged into new trauma last week as 50,000 Iranian troops drove across the Iraqi frontier. High anxiety swept the Persian Gulf oilfields, from neighboring Kuwait to Saudi Arabia, where United States electronic surveillance planes pooled their observations with satellite pictures to penetrate the haze of rhetoric obscuring the conflict. Baghdad claimed it was ''cleansing the soil'' of the forces of ''the Khomeini clique.'' Teheran claimed Iraq's ''Baathist, Zionist aggressors were forced to retreat.'' Neither side let reporters near the front where the fighting, mostly near Iraq's oil refinery port of Basra, was said to be furious.