What was going on when I was born?

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have begun drafting plans to redeploy the American Marine unit in Beirut away from the airport to safer ground in Lebanon or to amphibious vessels offshore, Administration officials said today. Officials said the plans had not yet reached the National Security Council, where they would be discussed with President Reagan, but they said the idea would be welcomed there. They cautioned, however, that no consideration was being given at this time to withdrawing the marines. The plans are being drafted in response to military, political and diplomatic pressures, the officials said, among them these: - Increasing uneasiness expressed by senior military officers over the Administration's course in Lebanon. The officers fear development of a situation like Vietnam in which political and military objectives would be vague, military forces insufficient or under restraint and public support lacking.

''To be back home still feels like a dream to me.

A whipping wind swept through lower Manhattan yesterday, a miniature tornado struck Times Square and lesser windstorms knocked around pedestrians on some street corners around town. Yesterday was one of the windiest days of the year, with gusts clocked as high as 54 miles an hour. Worth Street was closed between Lafayette Street and Broadway when a skyscraper's antenna wobbled dangerously in the wind. Trees fell and knocked out electricity for thousands of people on Long Island and in Westchester. But as blustery as the suburbs were, some spots in Manhattan may have had it worse. Even on relatively mild days the quirks of the architectural landscape can make the wind blow like a tiny typhoon. Umbrellas, hats and hairdos are destroyed, doors slam shut and pedestrians stagger to lampposts for support.

It began with a seemingly routine notification that a vacancy had been filled on the Mayor's Committee on the Judiciary. But a Sept. 26 letter to Mayor Koch from Presiding Justice Francis T. Murphy Jr. of the Appellate Division of the First Department of State Supreme Court in Manhattan touched off a sharply worded exchange. As a result, the Mayor reconstituted the committee yesterday. Two issues were at stake - whether the Mayor's power of appointment to the committee was absolute and whether its members broadly represented the city's population. The 27-member committee, created by a Koch executive order in 1978, recommends candidates for judicial vacancies. Thirteen members are appointed by the Mayor, six each are chosen by Justice Murphy and his counterpart in the Second Department, Justice Milton Mollen, and two by law- school deans, on a rotating basis. Until yesterday, the 25 members named by Mr. Koch and the judges served concurrently with the Mayor.

Plans to redeploy the Marine unit in Beirut away from the airport to safer ground in Lebanon or to amphibious ships offshore are being drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Reagan Administration officials said. They stressed that no consideration was being given to withdrawing the marines. The officials said the plans were being charted in response to military, political and diplomatic pressures, including increasing uneasiness among senior military officers over the Administration's course in Lebanon. (Page A1, Column 6.) A joyful hero's welcome was accorded to 1,800 marines and sailors as they returned home to Camp Lejeune, N.C. They are the survivors of the unit that lost 240 men in a bomb attack in Beirut in October. School bands played, and thousands of yellow ribbons floated from trees, telephone poles and car antennas. (A1:5.)

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.

Two Spanish jetliners collided in heavy fog on a takeoff runway here this morning, killing about 90 people and injuring more than 30 of the approximately 45 survivors. It was the second airline disaster here in 10 days. The collision, which occurred at 9:50, touched off explosions and fires on both aircraft. One, Iberia Airlines Flight 350, was a Boeing 727 bound for Rome with 93 people aboard, 40 of them Japanese tourists. The other,

''Billowing black smoke from burning ships'' is how Dec. 7, 1941, is remembered by Lee Harrison Johnson of Staten Island. ''Everything looked to be on fire.'' Leanna Draper Wilson of Brooklyn was taken up into the Honolulu hills in mid-battle after her mother discovered a piece of shrapnel (her father was at sea on the carrier Lexington). She remembers ''planes coming in over the house - so low a Japanese pilot looked at me over the side of his canopied cockpit'' and later, ''people moving along the roads with their mattresses over their heads.''

The ability of this country's farmers to get nearly everything they want from the Government appears to be eroding rapidly, but it is equally evident that farmers are as effective as ever in killing what they do not want. Farmers' political influence is shrinking not only because there are fewer farmers than there used to be but also because of rising concern about budget deficits and because divisions have developed among the various agricultural interests and between those interests and the Reagan Administration. Nonetheless, the farmers remain one of the strongest lobbies in Washington. Major Reagan Objectives The Administration sought only two pieces of major farm legislation this year. One would have imposed a freeze on subsidy rates for grain and cotton farmers at 1983 levels. Under the Farm Act of 1981, the subsidies are scheduled to rise again next year, even though the Administration insists they are already so high they are encouraging overproduction.

In a move to streamline its operations and bolster sagging earnings, the Bank of America announced yesterday that it will reduce its staff by up to 6,000 people during 1984 - primarily through attrition - and close about 220 branches throughout California. Bank of America employs about 60,000 in California and has just over 1,000 branches in the state. Samuel H. Armacost, president and chief executive, said the bank, the nation's largest, would depend more heavily on electronics to deliver banking services to consumers and small businesses. ''Evolving technology makes it no longer necessary to use conventional branches as extensively as before,'' he said.

Greeted with tears of joy and relief, 1,800 marines and sailors, the survivors of a unit that lost more than 200 men to a bomb attack in Beirut, came home today to a rousing hero's welcome. High school bands played, children gathered on street corners to wave American flags and thousands of yellow ribbons were tied to billboards, trees, telephone poles and automobile antennas. The cheers from hundreds of friends, relatives and onlookers began in nearby Morehead City, where the marines disembarked from the Navy ships that had brought them from Lebanon. ''To be back home still feels like a dream to me,'' said Lance Cpl. Michael Cerniglia of Schenectady, N.Y., after greeting his family at Camp Lejeune. ''It is just so good to be back alive.''

The former chairman of the Frigitemp Corporation pleaded guilty yesterday to participating in a scheme to pay $5 million in kickbacks to the one- time head of a General Dynamics Corporation shipbuilding unit and his assistant. The guilty plea, to two counts of criminal conspiracy, was entered by Gerald E. Lee, 57 years old, one of four executives indicted by a Federal grand jury in Manhattan on Sept. 9 in connection with the scheme. According to the indictment, Mr. Lee paid the kickbacks between 1974 and 1979 to P. Takis Veliotis, then the president of General Dynamics' Quincy Shipbuilding division in Quincy, Mass., and to Mr. Veliotis's assistant, James H. Gilliland, to win $45 million in subcontracts for Frigitemp for insulation work on tankers and submarines.