What was going on when I was born?

Through Aug. 1 the Orange County Agricultural Society is presenting its 142d county fair at the county fairgrounds, on the border of the city of Middletown, 60 miles from New York at the junction of Interstate 84 and Routes 17 and 6. Beef and dairy cattle, sheep, goats, arts, crafts, apples, pears, plums, grapes, pies, cakes, breads, needlework, flowers and plants by the thousands will all be competing for the traditional blue ribbons as well as $30,000 in prize money. Entertainment includes puppet shows, motorcycle stunt riding and music by Jimmy Sturr, the polka king. Tonight at 8, it's wrestling (admission, $4 and $6). General fairgrounds admission, $3; $2 for those younger than 12. Open noon to midnight. Information: (914) 343-4826. JAZZ ON GRAND STREET STAGE ''Jazz-Set'' is a play by Ron Milner that attempts to track the path of jazz into mainstream American music. The original music in this work is by the percussionist Max Roach. Mr. Milner, a Detroiter, is the author also of ''What the Wine Sellers Buy,'' ''Who's Got His Own'' and ''The Killing Floor.'' Norman Riley is the director of the cast of six: Rony Clanton, E.L. James, William Kennedy, S. Epatha Merkerson, Monsoor Najee-Ullah and Nick Smith. Performances begin at 7:30 P.M. at the New Federal Theater, 466 Grand Street. Admission, $5; the elderly, $2.50. Information: 598-0400.

In a victory for the Reagan Administration, the Senate tonight approved a proposal for a 10 percent withholding tax on stock dividends and interest received by millions of Americans. The Senate also approved provisions in a tax bill that would raise two consumer taxes - the Federal excises on cigarettes and telephone service. The cigarette tax would be doubled to 16 cents a pack, effective Jan. 1 and running until Sept. 30, 1985, when it would revert to 8 cents a pack. The excise tax on telephone service, now 1 percent, would rise to 2 percent in 1983 and 3 percent in 1984-1985, and then decline to 2 percent in 1986.

Because of an editing error, an arti- cle yesterday on the White House bar- ber shop incorrectly stated the shop's cost arrangement. According to the White House Press Office, all users, including the President and the Vice President, pay $16 and up for haircuts.

International France defied Washington's order barring European companies operating under American license from producing equipment for a pipeline that will supply Western Europe with Soviet natural gas. The French order to proceed with the contracts applies mainly to a nationalized French company using American technology to make 40 turbine rotors for the 3,500-mile pipeline. (Page A1, Column 6.) Iran opened a new drive near the strategic Iraqi oil port of Basra, and Iraq said it had hurled back the two Iranian brigades that led the attack. Baghdad said several thousand Iranians had been killed. (A3:4-6.)

rock at Maxwell's in Hoboken. Echo and the Bunnymen, who are probably the most popular band to have emerged from Liverpool since the Beatles, are at the Peppermint Lounge. George Benson, an exceptional jazz guitarist and a very successful pop vocalist, is at Radio City Music Hall. Angela Bofill is singing her personal urban pop at the Dr Pepper Festival on the Hudson. And there's more, lots more. It's a summer weekend in New York City, and it's alive with pop music of just about every stripe. But what does the variety and the vitality of the pop music that can be heard in New York on this or any given summer weekend tell us about the state of pop music today? Can this weekend's pop schedule be read like tarot cards so that a picture emerges of where pop music is and where it is going?

''The feminization of poverty will become one of the major issues of the 1980's.

Philip C. Habib, President Reagan's special Middle East envoy, 6,000 miles from here, within earshot of the fighting in Beirut, surrounded by wanted and unwanted intermediaries, using the secure telephone almost daily to the State Department and the White House, has been a prime shaper of policy in the Lebanese crisis, according to Administration officials. Officials from the White House and the State Department also said Mr. Habib enjoys unusual leeway as a negotiator, almost as much as a traveling Secretary of State, although not as much as Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger had in his shuttle diplomacy in 1974 and 1975. Drive to Solve Problems In pursuing the Administration's goal of getting the Palestine Liberation Organization out of Beirut without a further Israeli attack, Mr. Habib has, through force of circumstance and because of his own well-known drive to solve problems, helped to thrust the United States deeply into the role of mediator, more deeply than initially intended or understood. He is credited with formulating the proposal to use American troops to oversee the withdrawal of Palestinian forces from Beirut, calling it in a telegram ''the sine qua non'' of a pullout.

The Ford Motor Company said today that it planned to sell a controlling interest in its Rouge Steel Company subsidiary to a group of Japanese concerns led by Nippon Kokan, Japan's second-largest steelmaker. The takeover of Rouge Steel, the nation's eighth-largest steel company, would represent the first major investment by a large Japanese steelmaker in the United States. The sprawling, 1,200-acre River Rouge complex in Dearborn just southwest of Detroit is a legacy of the first Henry Ford, who decided in the 1920's to build a fully integrated operation, where raw materials go in one end and cars come out the other. It is the only one of its kind in the nation.

It was hardly the traditional kind of command center. But the roof of 520 Madison Avenue was turned into just that all day Wednesday and yesterday as crucial decisions were being made about a crane boom dangling 44 stories above 53d Street. During the long hours, participants took the elevator to the 42d floor and then climbed the last few flights to the roof. There were police brass, fire officials, Buildings Department commissioners, helicopter experts, construction specialists and executives from the Tishman Construction Corporation, which is building the almostcompleted office building.

Israel, charging that the cease-fire had been violated by Syrians in eastern Lebanon and Palestinians in western Beirut, attacked on both fronts today with air and artillery strikes. A senior Government official emphasized that the Israeli actions were separate retaliatory measures of limited scope and duration and were not intended as a resumption of full-scale war. He said Israeli ground troops were not advancing beyond the cease-fire lines. The military spokesman announced tonight that the Israeli action on the eastern front stopped at 6:30 P.M. (12:30 P.M., New York time). Israeli planes were used on both fronts for the first time since June 25.

One savings and loan association has been left insolvent, another is ''severely impaired'' and several others have been weakened as a result of uninsured losses they incurred in the recent collapse of the Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma City, according to the head of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. The bank board's chairman, Richard T. Pratt, also said that three thrift institutions with a combined total of more than $10 million on deposit with Penn Square in uninsured accounts had violated Federal regulations governing the amount of funds that any one institution can deposit in another. The disclosures, in a letter from Mr. Pratt on Wednesday to Representative Benjamin S. Rosenthal, Democrat of Queens and chairman of the House Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee, did not identify the thrift institutions involved with Penn Square. But it did provide the first complete information on the extent of the thrift industry's losses in the Penn Square failure.

The French Government announced today that it was instructing French companies to fulfill their contracts to produce American-licensed components for a Soviet pipeline despite a ban by President Reagan. The French decision applies mainly to Alsthom-Atlantique, a nationalized French company that has a contract to produce 40 turbine rotors for the pipeline, which will supply Western Europe with natural gas from Siberia. The company has a license from General Electric to manufacture the rotors. President Reagan ordered a ban on the use of American licenses in retaliation against the Soviet Union, which he held ultimately responsible for the imposition of martial law in Poland last December. He acted under provisions of the Export Administration Act that require any license to be consistent with American trade laws and policies.