What was going on when I was born?

When things go wrong with the economy, the alcoholic beverage business usually holds its own. Drinking customs resist change, and almost anybody can afford a glass of beer. But in today's recession, many drinkers have reduced their intake or switched to less expensive drinks, and the $47 billion industry is suffering. Indeed, for the first time since the Great Depression, the experts report, an economic downturn is having a noticeable effect on the consumption of liquor, beer and wine.

THIS is the tale of an incredible gravy whose five-day sojourn in the refrigerator was an inspiration to the cook, a gravy of such finesse that ... ''Oh, come, come,'' the skeptic objects. ''Leftover gravy, even if it is not five days old, is cold comfort indeed. What an unpromising beginning for a piece.'' Not necessarily. With leftovers, as with hand-me-downs in general, certain distinctions must be made. With most of them, admittedly, it is only conscience that cows us into keeping them around. We carry a roost of moralizing watch-birds in our heads: If we but think of tossing last Saturday's shank of lamb to the dogs or of secreting Aunt Martha's sequined calendar towel in the trash, they raise their ancient racket about ingratitude and waste. Though we would like nothing better than to have both items out of the house, we hang the one and serve the other, hardly caring which treatment is given which, so depressing is the thought of either.

South Africa dissolved the four-year-old National Assembly in South-West Africa today and announced that it was resuming direct rule. The move followed the resignation of the Council of Ministers made up of members of a multiracial political front called the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance. The Alliance was initially sponsored and promoted by the South African authorities as an alternative to a black nationalist insurgent movement called the South-West Africa People's Organization. The insurgents are seeking to turn the territory into the independent nation of Namibia, a name already frequently used for the territory.

Slowed by bad weather, housing starts fell 13 percent in December, to an annual rate of 1.22 million, the Government reported today. For all of 1982, work was started on just 1.061 million units, the lowest number since 1946. The December decline came after three consecutive months of sharp increases that brought housing starts from a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 1 million units in August to a rate of 1.404 million starts in November. The November figure was 24.7 percent above October, the Commerce Department's report said, a slight downward revision of the 26.5 percent increase reported last month.

Mark White took the oath to become the new Governor of Texas today and minutes later led a fervent crowd of about a thousand well-wishers through a chilly downpour to the gates of the Governor's mansion. Once there, he used a bolt-cutter to lop off a lock that had been symbolically placed on the gate for the ceremony. Then he led the damp contingent into the big house, where certificates were handed out. Bearing the state seal, they proclaimed that the bearer had ''assisted the Honorable Mark White, Governor of Texas, in removing the lock from the front gate of the Governor's Mansion, thereby opening it to and for the people of the state, to whom it rightfully belongs.''

FOR New York families like the Allevas, the Anagnostous and the Fables, the Kurowyckys and the Weisses, a store, their store, is a living organism requiring, more often demanding, a constant nourishment that only they as families can provide with the labors of their hands and heads. Their lives are their stores, their stores their lives. Families such as these, whose lineages are European and for whom nothing is more important than tradition and family continuity, are not uncommon in this city of immigrants. And though there are likely more of them who run food shops here than in other American cities, their number appears to be dwindling as children grow up, are educated and elect to leave the family businesses for other ways of life. But this is not true of all of them. So it is that Robert Alleva, the youngest of the Allevas who boast that their 92-year-old business is the oldest Italian cheese store in the United States, graduated from college, went to work as a medical technologist, then returned to the tiny store on Grand Street in Little Italy. ''It was always in the back of my mind to come back here,'' he said. ''I'd like to keep it going, I guess forever.''

Because of an editing error, an article about the New York Jets in Sports Pages yesterday gave an incorrect figure for Freeman McNeil's rushing total last Saturday. It was 105 yards.

Mayor Koch proposed a $16.5 billion preliminary budget yesterday for the next fiscal year. The Mayor said his proposal contained the most ''dramatic'' spending reductions and largest tax increases Text of Koch statement, page B4. that New Yorkers have faced since the city's fiscal crisis of the mid-1970's. ''Make no mistake about it,'' Mr. Koch said of his outline for the 12-month period that begins next July 1. ''This is a tough program, a painful program, in many ways an unacceptable program.''

Moving dramatically to increase its presence in international banking, the American Express Company announced yesterday that it was buying five European and Latin American operations of the Swiss-based Trade Development Bank Holding S.A. for $550 million in cash and securities. Analysts and American Express executives said that the purchase would in effect give the company an overseas network to expand the trading, investment banking and other activities of Shearson/American Express, the securities subsidiary that American Express acquired in June 1981. Edmond J. Safra, 52 years old, a financier born in Lebanon who is now a Brazilian citizen, owns a controlling interest in Trade Development Bank Holding. Under the terms of the acquisition, Mr. Safra, who serves as chairman of the holding company, will become the largest shareholder of American Express, with just under 2 percent of its stock, an investment worth approximately $130 million.

If the people building the New York Convention Center hadn't found Jerry Lowery in Houston, someone would have had to invent him. He is the perfect manager for this particular city and this particular project, a glass and metal grid behemoth of a gathering hall rising along the Hudson River. Throwing out hyperbole and superlatives as though they were spitballs and he were in third grade, talking in italics and a twang, Mr. Lowery speaks about the Convention Center in a way that only a Texan would dare and only New York could appreciate. A Great Hall wide enough to hold two 747's wing tip to wing tip and tall enough to accommodate the Statue of Liberty, he says, striding across the massive structural slabs at the building site between 34th and 39th Streets and 11th and 12th Avenues.

Citicorp, the nation's largest bank holding company, reported yesterday that its fourth-quarter net operating income declined 27 percent from the period a year earlier, but some analysts contended that it was a fairly strong showing anyway. In terms of the key indicator of a bank's basic profitability - return on average assets - Citicorp did better than two other leading bank holding companies that reported fourth-quarter results yesterday. The Manufacturers Hanover Corporation, the nation's fourth-largest banking concern, reported a 20 percent increase in net operating income, and the Bankers Trust New York Corporation, the ninth largest, reported basically flat results. Despite its fourth-quarter decline -which was largely the result of a nonrecurring factor that increased after-tax results of the 1981 fourth quarter by $41 million - Citicorp said that in the latest quarter it earned 58 cents on each $100 of average total assets. That was a penny above Bankers Trust's 57-cent return, and 4 cents above the 54 cents Manufacturers Hanover earned on each $100 of total assets.

Scores of architects in New York City, the nation's leading architectural center, have been laid off in recent weeks as the recession has slowed or halted major commercial construction. Many firms have also stopped hiring and are undertaking strict costcutting measures. ''It's a difficult situation right now indeed,'' said George Lewis, executive director of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. ''And the immediate future does not look good.'' Skidmore Owings & Merrill, one of the largest firms in the city, dismissed 43 architects last week, a reduction of between 12 and 15 percent in the staff of the New York office, according to Gordon Wildermuth, one of the partners.