What was going on when I was born?

''To all those doom criers, and they are worldwide, we have a message.

On occasion, residents of this little community in the Berkshire foothills will look up to find tourists standing in their front hallways and living rooms. They live in a community easily mistaken for a living museum, with its pure white Congregational church overlooking a village green (with cannon) and block after block of white clapboard homes with black or green shutters. The National Park Service once described it as probably the ''finest surviving example of of a typical late 18thcentury New England town.'' Now, pigmentation has reared its ugly head in Litchfield, and many residents are strenuously objecting to what they see as this corrosion of Colonial charm. The Methodists have painted their white church a color, several colors actually - light gold and dark gold with blue window sash, not to mention the tricolored roof in gold and two shades of brown.

The Sanitation Department said yesterday that 400 truckloads of refuse had gone uncollected in New York City on Wednesday and Thursday because of a sudden increase in truck safety inspections and ''a slowdown in work performance'' by sanitation workers. The reduction in collections, which was citywide, left about 2,400 tons on the street out of the 17,000 tons normally collected each day, the department said. The report of a slowdown came as the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association was pressing in contract negotiations for pay increases of at least 16 percent over the next two years.

International Ways to avert an accidental war proposed by President Reagan and made public in his Nov. 22 speech have evoked interest on the part of the Soviet leadership, according to Administration officials. They said the Kremlin had sent Mr. Reagan a message asking where the United States wanted to discuss the proposals in detail and were told that the Administration wished to pursue the subject at the arms control talks in Geneva. (Page A1, Column 4.) American aid for Lebanon's Army over the next year has been pledged by the Reagan Administration. United States officials said that American forces would train and help rebuild the Lebanese Army so that it could eventually maintain the country's internal security. (A12:3-4.)

Asserting that inadequate salaries discourage able candidates from seeking state judicial posts and sitting judges from remaining in them, particularly in New York City, a special commission is recommending judicial pay increases amounting to $20.2 million. The panel, the Temporary Commission on Judicial Compensation, suggests in a report scheduled to be released today that all judges in the state system be given pay raises, and that judges in New York City and Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk Counties be given, in addition, a 16 percent bonus. The bonus is to cover higher living costs and to deter the judges from seeking the more lucrative employment that is available in these areas. The panel recommends that the increases, which it says are ''the minimum necessary'' to keep the state's judiciary functioning at an acceptable level, take effect Jan. 1. However, the increases, must be approved by the State Legislature.

Two large oil companies, the Cities Service Company and Ashland Oil Inc., announced yesterday that they were cutting a dollar a barrel from the prices they would pay for crude oil purchased in the United States. The announcements were ''just the first step'' in a broader reduction of domestic crude oil prices, said Ted D'Afflisio, associate editor of Oil Buyers Guide International. He said the price changes ''give further evidence of the weakness of the oil market'' resulting from a worldwide oversupply of crude, and added that he expected the nation's major oil companies to announce similar price reductions next week and further cuts by January.

President Reagan warned an audience of United States and Brazilian business leaders today that the global trend toward trade barriers and protectionism would lead to ''economic contraction and eventually dangerous instability'' in the Western Hemisphere and the developing world. In his second and final full day in Brazil, Mr. Reagan flew from Brasilia in the interior to the nation's industrial and financial center to deliver a familiar appeal for free trade and free enterprise unfettered by government controls. Mr. Reagan did not refer to any specific trade disputes with Brazil. The two main ones have been over Brazil's practice of subsidizing exports and the United States effort to lower barriers to international trade in banking, insurance and other services areas. Brazil has led the fight against such a move.

Good cheer and conviviality mark the annual convention here of the nation's brokers and securities analysts, who are basking in the bright south Florida sun and the glow of prosperity from the richest quarter in their history. ''If you don't make it in the brokerage business now, you'll never make it,'' suggested Donald E. Weston, chairman of Gradison & Company, a Cincinnati-based firm. ''You've got to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be able to do business now.'' ''The psychological momentum is out there - those who do have money are beginning to turn it loose, and those who don't have it, don't have to worry about it anyhow,'' said Joseph Ancona, a senior vice president of Daniel & Bell Inc., a small New York brokerage firm, as he stood in a crowded, sumptuous oceanside reception.

The Ways and Means Committee approved a bill to raise taxes on gasoline by 5 cents a gallon to help finance President Reagan's $32.9 billion highway improvement program. The panel, with both parties behind the new tax, cleared the bill with unusual speed. It could reach the floor on Monday. (Page A1.) Factory orders fell 3.9 percent in October, the biggest decline in a year, the Commerce Department said. The sharp drop was seen as more evidence that recession persists. (D1.) But sales of new singlefamily homes fell just 0.4 percent in October, to an annual rate of 487,000, after a 28 percent surge in September. (D3.)

With lottery fever gripping New Jersey, state officials today increased the top prize in the Pick-6 contest shortly before the winning numbers were drawn, letting the jackpot climb to more than $11 million. With the $1 tickets selling on the final day at the rate of almost 300,000 an hour, harried vendors scrambled through storerooms to find enough tickets to meet the demands of bettors, who had begun lining up before 7 A.M. More than 3.5 million tickets were sold today alone. Here in the State Capitol, talk of the jackpot, the largest ever offered by any lottery agency in the country, all but eclipsed discussions on the budget. ''The last 48 hours have been the most hectic in the history of the New Jersey lottery,'' said Hazel Gluck, the executive director of the lottery. ''People have been having a heck of a lot of fun with it.''

THE SMALL TOP comes to town today. The outrageously blue tent of the Big Apple Circus will inhabit Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center until the day after New Year, imparting a clowny bluish tinge to the white travertine walls of its neighbors, the New York State Theater and the Metropolitan Opera. Heading over to the Big Apple Circus is not exactly a cultural imperative of the Christmas season on the order of, say, taking the kids to see ''The Nutcracker'' next door at the New York City Ballet. After all, this is only the second year that Lincoln Center has run away with the circus, and cultural traditions in New York, even instant ones, usually take a few years to become hallowed customs.

With a rare spirit of bipartisan cooperation, the House Ways and Means Committee today formally adopted legislation to raise gasoline taxes by 5 cents a gallon, effective April 1. The added revenue would provide $5.5 billion annually to finance President Reagan's proposed five-year, $32.9 billion program to improve the nation's highway and mass transit systems. Four-fifths of the money would go to highways, and the rest to mass transit. Moving with unusual speed that reflected the support of both Democratic and Republican leaders, the committee approved the measure in a four-hour session after only one day of hearings, Wednesday. The committee often spends days and even weeks on its hearings and drafting sessions.