What was going on when I was born?

The financially troubled Baldwin-United Corporation has signed a 93-day standstill agreement with its creditor banks, the company and bankers said yesterday. However, Baldwin was required to put up as collateral the assets of one of its principal subsidiaries. One analyst suggested that Baldwin might be pledging the same asset to more than one set of creditors. James Chanos, an analyst with Gilford Securities, a Chicago investment house, said that Baldwin appeared to have pledged $79.5 million of convertible preferred stock in the subsidiary, Balunit, to one group of bank lenders, owed $242 million. Baldwin has said in the past - and reiterated yesterday - that Balunit's major asset, the MGIC Investment Corporation, the nation's largest mortgage insurer, is pledged separately to another group of banks, which is owed $440 million.

Sales at the retail level rose threetenths of 1 percent last month, the Commerce Department reported today. Though modest, the gain was the first since November and a strong improvement over February's revised 1.2 percent decline. The gain mainly reflected a big turnaround for auto dealers, with car sales rising 3.5 percent in March after falling 4.1 percent the previous month.

The New York State Urban Development Corporation is undergoing a marked change of direction that has resulted in the most tumultuous transition of the Cuomo administration. As it reaches its 15th anniversary, the agency is trying to reduce its traditional emphasis on large-scale development projects, which has led to billions of dollars of construction, and to expand the state's influence in the emerging high-technology industries. Since William J. Stern, Governor Cuomo's campaign treasurer, moved into the agency's offices in January as the first person to serve as both chairman and president, he has dismissed 6 of the corporation's 16 top executives. Three others have resigned and the three top officers of an agency subsidiary, the Mortgage Loan Enforcement and Administration Corporation, have also resigned or been dismissed. 'People Feel Threatened' Mr. Stern's moves have brought praise from the Governor, but they have caused grumblings in some corridors of the agency, at 1515 Broadway, at 44th Street, where many of its 210 employees have become edgy about the direction of the agency and, in some cases, about their jobs.

SEVERAL years ago, shortly after San Yan Wong, a recent arrival from Hong Kong, opened his Hunan Garden Restaurant on Mott Street in Chinatown, a customer came in, sat down and ordered chow mein. Mr. Wong, who is also his own head chef, remembers that he whipped up a platterful of stir-fried soft noodles covered with shredded pork, sliced bamboo shoots and bok choy, fresh water chestnuts, snow peas and Chinese black mushrooms, and sent the dish out of the kitchen. Minutes later he was called to the customer's table. ''What's that?'' the customer asked. ''Chow mein,'' Mr. Wong said. ''That's lo mein, not chow mein,'' the man insisted, and he began to describe in detail that preparation so dear to generations of Americans: vegetables, stir-fried to softness, sitting atop a mound of dry-fried noodles and rice, and topped with a few julienned slices of pork. Mr. Wong, a man who likes to please his customers, listened carefully and, within days, chow mein American style was added to his menu. ''I felt that if I did not have it, if I told people I would not make it, they would leave,'' he said.

Insider trading in options has become a sticky problem for the traders and regulators of the nation's options exchanges. Once a plague of the stock exchanges, insider trading has moved into the options pits, propelled by the chance to make staggering profits. Ambiguous laws covering insider trading in options and the relative ease of evading enforcement procedures add to the lure of options. Recently, a handful of highly sensitive cases, paticularly one involving Thomas Reed, a special assistant to President Reagan, have come to light as a result of renewed enforcement activity by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But many less publicized cases may be falling through the holes of the enforcement net, enforcement officials and traders say. With their present tools, regulators seem powerless do much about a myriad of smaller, ad hoc abuses, they say.

A picture caption on page A1 yesterday misidentified the member of the Presidential Commission on Strategic Forces shown at the left. He was James R. Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense.

City Council President Carol Bellamy yesterday challenged Mayor Koch over his policy to collect property taxes from many cultural and scientific institutions that are exempt. In a letter dated March 25 and released by her office yesterday, Miss Bellamy also urged the Mayor to release a report on the subject that he has kept secret since last October. The report, which she distributed to reporters, recommends that Mr. Koch renounce his policy because the cost of the exemptions to the city is ''insubstantial.'' The Mayor puts the total at up to $15 million a year.

Paul A. Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said today that long-term interest rates were too high for a sustained economic recovery. But his comments on Fed policy, in testimony before the House Banking Committee, provided no signal as to the likely direction of either long- or short-term interest rates, which the markets and politicians are watching closely. On a separate issue, Mr. Volcker urged Congress not to rush ahead with approval of a requirement that the Fed supply specific ''objectives'' for economic growth, unemployment and inflation. Mr. Volcker said this move, which is another of the efforts to strengthen Congressional control over Fed policy, would be ''counterproductive.'' 'Nameless, Faceless Mystics' Several members of the committee, including its chairman, Fernand St Germain, a Rhode Island Democrat, pressed Mr. Volcker on this issue. Mr. St Germain criticized the ''nameless, faceless mystics who function in absolute secrecy at the Fed,'' and said, ''Mr. Chairman, we simply want to know what your best estimates are.''

''While there may be bumps along the way, we will not be deterred from our long-term objective, which is a broad-based settlement.'' - President Reagan on Mideast peace plan. (A1:5.)

International The White House was rebuffed on its policy in Central America by a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. In party-line voice votes, the Democratic-controlled panel rejected an Administration request for an additional $50 million in military aid for El Salvador and voted to bar United States aid to rebels in Nicaragua in the absence of a joint Congressional resolution. (Page A1, Column 1.) The President warned Palestinians that unless their leadership made ''a bold and courageous move'' to break the deadlock over peace negotiations, they would face continued frustration in seeking their goals. (A1:2.)

A picture caption in Metropolitan Report yesterday on the demolition of Baker Field incorrectly gave the scheduled completion date for the replacement football field and stands. It is September 1984.

READING a book while dining alone would seem to be the answer to two of life's most vexing difficulties. No one has enough time to read - with some 40,000 books published every year, even Evelyn Wood has to strain to keep up - and everyone gets tired of breaking the monotony of dining alone by counting the escargots on the restaurant's peeling wallpaper. Yet, like many of the world's good things, reading in a restaurant is teeming with peril for the unwary, and should never be attempted without serious and careful preparation. The initial difficulties the tableside reader faces are all psychological, for a powerful array of forces view the mingling of books and food the way Mr. Clean looks at ground-in dirt. Arrayed in careful ranks are: * The literary purist, who thinks that any reading done outside of the equivalent of Bernard Berenson's exquisite study at I Tatti is an insult to the written word.