What was going on when I was born?

Tornadoes roared across 11 counties in western and central New York Monday evening, killing three people, injuring dozens more and damaging or destroying hundreds of homes, state officials said. The destructive winds and rain, ''sounding like 10 jet fighters going over,'' according to Joseph Johnson, a Chautauqua County resident, moved eastward across the state, pulling trees from the ground, blowing apart houses and barns and tossing cars in the air. In rural Boonville, north of Utica, the village police station, which was not occupied at the time, was torn from its foundation by a tornado that smashed it down two blocks away. The funnel then skipped over the Sunset Nursing Home across the street, breaking a few windows as it went by, to continue a three-mile-long path of destruction.

A long-planned summit meeting of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, scheduled for this month, has been postponed indefinitely because of disputes within the group, East European sources said today. The meeting of Communist Party chiefs would have been the first such gathering of national leaders since 1971. It was to work out a trading strategy for the rest of the century for the 10-nation Communist economic alliance, which is usually referred to as Comecon.

The House Select Committee on Intelligence, in a setback for the Reagan Administration, voted today to cut off funds for the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert military actions in Nicaragua. Instead, by a party-line vote of 9 to 5, the committee authorized $80 million for overt aid to ''any friendly country in Central America,'' to help interrupt the flow of weapons through such nations from Cuba or Nicaragua to El Salvador or any other Central American nation. The committee action, which came in a closed session, may prove more symbolic than real. It is attached to an authorization bill for the fiscal year 1983, which may expire before Congressional action is completed because of an expected Presidential veto. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

A Senate housing subcommittee is investigating reports that the Federal National Mortgage Association, the nation's largest housing lender, has exerted undue influence on private companies to obtain support for a bill that would greatly expand the association's lending authority. Peter B. Harkins, staff director of the subcommittee, said yesterday that the reports of undue pressure -which have been widespread in the housing finance business - were ''obviously very disturbing.'' He added that the subcommittee was ''trying to determine whether or not to take this to the Justice Department.'' Informed of Mr. Harkins's concern, Caryl S. Bernstein, executive vice president and general counsel of the association, which is popularly known as Fannie Mae, said: ''This is very, very interesting. At the moment, I am charged with who's doing what to whom on our legislative front. I am unaware of anything.''

Early one evening last week at J & F Oldsmobile, along jampacked Route 440 in Jersey City, James and Arlene Brennan were doing something they had not done in 11 years. They were buying a car. And their choice was no compact but a big Delta 88, with a price tag of almost $12,000. Mr. Brennan, a dispatcher for a trucking company, conceded that the price shook him. But only a large car would satisfy the Brennans. A few years ago, their Pontiac Catalina was crumpled by a speeding ambulance. No one was seriously hurt, but the police told the Brennans that if they had not been riding in a big car, they would probably be dead. ''When there's no other big cars on the road, then maybe we'll get a smaller car,'' said Mrs. Brennan, who is a legal secretary. Like the Brennans, buyers across the country are demonstrating renewed affection for the big car.

International A House committee vote cut off funds for the Central Intelligence Agency's covert military actions in Nicaragua, providing a setback for the Reagan Administration. Instead, by a party-line vote of 9 to 5, the House Select Committee on Intelligence authorized $80 million for overt aid ''to any friendly country in Central America,'' to help interrupt weapon shipments through such nations from Cuba or Nicaragua to El Salvador. (Page A1, Column 6.) United States covert aid for Afghan insurgents fighting Soviet forces and the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul has been stepped up, Reagan Administration officials said. (A1:4.)

Under this heading, The Times amplifies articles or rectifies what the editors consider significant lapses of fairness, balance or perspective. Corrections, also on this page, continue to deal with factual errors.

Yuri V. Andropov, the Soviet leader, offered today to reduce nuclear medium-range forces in Europe to the present NATO levels in numbers of warheads as well as in numbers of missiles and planes. His proposal, which left many details unclear, would still seek to include French and British nuclear forces within the arsenal of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and would bar the United States from deploying missiles in Europe as planned by the Atlantic alliance later this year. (The United States welcomed Soviet willingness to negotiate ceilings in warheads as well as in medium-range missiles and planes, but it insisted that it could not count British and French forces as part of the NATO arsenal. Page A16.)

Thousands of state workers have rushed to retire early in a program intended to reduce the state work force, save the state money and avert some layoffs. But a flood of retirements has created unexpected problems. Several state agencies have found that the people who are retiring are people whom the state needed. Consequently, the agencies may have to hire extra workers to fill the vacancies, possibly eliminating some of the savings they had hoped to gain.

YOU might say that Marvin Davis is the embodiment of the American gastronomic revolution of the last decade. In his kitchen the oil is pure virgin olive or perhaps almond or hazelnut; his mustards are plain or coarse-grained but imported; his vinegars range in flavors from raspberry to balsamic; his salads often contain radicchio (including the type known as red Treviso), the wild chicories from Italy; he puts sun-dried tomatoes to a dozen different and flavorful uses. Although he has cooked on numerous occasions with his friend Jacques Pepin, the author and teacher, Mr. Davis has never taken a cooking lesson. Nevertheless, he is a highly knowledgeable and creative cook. He lives with Cathie Payne in a spacious penthouse apartment in the East 60's in Manhattan. Most evenings he does the cooking, and she handles the cleaning up and putting away. They are both executives with advertising agencies in the city. He is senior vice president with Kornhauser & Calene and she is vice president-management supervisor with Della Femina, Travisano & Partners.

Interest rates fell again yesterday as the outlook for further rate declines brightened enough to stimulate investor demand for the huge supply of Treasury notes and bonds offered this week. The three days of Treasury note and bond auctions, which total $15 billion, are a major event in the credit markets. In short, the auctions test investor willingness to buy the securities that must be sold to finance the Federal budget deficit. In the last week, securities dealers said that investor interest has continued to increase. The yield at yesterday's opening auction for $6.5 billion of three-year notes fell to 9.48 percent, a threeyear low and down from 9.68 percent last Wednesday.

''The nuclear age is an era of moral as well as physical danger.