What was going on when I was born?

When Rupert Murdoch bought The Chicago Sun- Times here last January, it looked as if there would be a bloody shoot-out with The Chicago Tribune. After all, Mr. Murdoch's Post in New York had challenged The Tribune's Daily News subsidiary, sparking a spirited circulation battle. The Tribune, however, has shrugged off Mr. Murdoch's challenge, as the two papers focused on different income groups for their audience. What is more, the parent Tribune Company is prospering along several fronts in its first year as a publicly held corporation. Its Florida newspapers in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale remain among the nation's fastest-growing dailies, audiences for its WGN radio and television stations in Chicago have soared, and its huge Canadian newsprint mills have enjoyed an impressive turnaround.

The Storage Technology Corporation, a major computer concern, said yesterday that it had received a $150 million line of credit from Chemical Bank to help its bankruptcy reorganization. Computer analysts, however, said the credit would not be nearly enough to save the ailing company without a major sale of assets, a joint venture with another concern, or both. The funds will, however, give Storage Technology a few months to find a solution to its problems, the analysts said.

IF things had gone according to plan, Lewis Ranieri would have become a professional chef, like other men in his family. Instead, he is running the department that reportedly accounted for about 40 percent of Salomon Brothers' $415 million profit last year. ''I have more money than I ever knew existed,'' says Mr. Ranieri, who grew up in East New York and is said to be one of Salomon's highest-paid managing directors. ''I never dreamed this big.''

For all the careful orchestration of campaign rallies and political commercials, the televised debates, the partisan clashes over fine points of foreign and military policy, it was the economy that set the basic pattern for President Reagan's stunning re- election sweep yesterday and that fueled Republican gains in Congress. In a very real sense the election returns followed the well-established script of the Reagan Presidency to make economic policy the central issue of American politics, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll of 5,051 people as they left the voting booths. For Ronald Reagan vaulted into the White House in 1980 largely on the strength of his biting attacks on the economy under President Carter and his telling question, ''Are you better off today than you were four years ago?'' In the midterm Congressional elections two years ago, he suffered a stinging setback with the recession that eroded Republican ranks in the House of Representatives. Now this year, interviews showed, the President won a resounding vote of confidence for his handling of the economy and used it to power a coast-to-coast landslide for a second term in the White House.

Ronald Wilson Reagan won a second term as President yesterday in an election that Republican leaders hailed as a sweeping personal triumph and a mandate for his policies. Mr. Reagan secured clear landslide victories in both popular and electoral votes as he defeated Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic nominee, in at least 48 of the 50 states. However, it remained unclear whether the powerful tide of support for Mr. Reagan ran deeply enough to carry enough Republican Congressional candidates into office to secure the ''historic electoral realignment'' that the President asked the voters to deliver. Reagan Is Hailed With more than two-thirds of the popular vote counted, Mr. Reagan led Mr. Mondale by about 59 percent to 41 percent. The President waited until after midnight, Eastern time, to claim the election that continued his tenure as the oldest man to occupy the White House.

The United States and the Soviet Union have agreed to sit down in Moscow early next year and explore ways to expand trade, American officials said today. The meeting will be the highest- level economic talks between the two superpowers in six years. Although some Defense Department officials are wary of more trade with the Russians, the talks scheduled for Jan. 8-10 are seen here as a step toward what President Reagan has called a ''more constructive relationship'' with the Soviet Union. Asked for comment on the meeting, Sergei L. Divilkovskiy, counselor for press affairs at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, said, ''I cannot help you beause I am not prepared to give you a meaningful reply.''

Stock prices soared yesterday in surprisingly busy trading, closing at their best levels since they began to climb in early August. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 14.91 points, to 1,244.15, after gaining more than 12 points Monday. The close was the highest since the average ended at 1,244.45 on Jan. 23. The two other major market indicators closed at their best levels of the year.

Nicaragua has received a number of Soviet-built attack helicopters in recent days, a senior Administration official said Tuesday night. He said the White House viewed their delivery as a ''very serious development.'' In addition, Administration officials said they were concerned about a Soviet freighter apparently headed for Nicaragua that intelligence reports indicated was carrying crates that could contain MIG fighter aircraft.

CALVIN KLEIN rarely makes grandiose claims about his contribution to fashion. When asked about his work, he often says he makes the kind of clothes he likes and hopes women would like to wear. After showing his spring collection yesterday morning, he went a little further. He didn't want to get political, he said, referring to Election Day, but he said he believed ''we are moving into conservatism.'' What he meant by conservative dress, he explained, was that ''vulgarity in clothes, sensationalism in fashion, is not what women want - what they want is to look attractive and healthy.''

Senate Republican candidates grasped President Reagan's coattails yesterday, but early returns indicated that they would be unable to solidify their control of the Senate. Mr. Reagan, who spent the final week of his campaign appearing in behalf of Senate Republican candidates, seemed unable to translate his dramatic victory into significantly increasing the Republican margin in the Senate. But Democrats were similarly unable to make significant inroads into the Republican margin. Should this pattern prevail, Mr. Reagan could expect to encounter the same resistance to some of his programs that he experienced in the last two years.

The bribing of New York City inspectors - a problem the authorities call pervasive - has become the target of new law enforcement strategies that some officials say offer hope of changing long-entrenched patterns of corruption. The strategies, which include Abscam-style sting operations and Federal prosecution of what are essentially local crimes, have already had some effect, according to Patrick W. McGinley, the City Investigation Commissioner, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Giuliani, whose district covers Manhattan, the Bronx and six upstate counties, said he was amazed at the recent findings. ''Every time an opportunity was there, inspectors took,'' he said. ''The dramatic fact is that no one ever turned us down. That's worse than Abscam. Even being from New York and cynical, I was surprised at the number caught.''

ONE of Austria's most highly praised chefs is Karl Eschlb"ock, the proprietor of his family's hotel and restaurant, the Hotel Eschlb"ock in Mondsee, a sailing and mountain-climbing resort outside Salzburg. His skills have been compared with those of Paul Bocuse in France and Fredy Girardet in Switzerland; his clientele have names like Getty, Niarchos and von Karajan; his dishes bear an undeniable hallmark of creativity and inventiveness. Mr. Eschlb"ock came to New York recently as guest chef for a dinner at Recipes are on page C12 . Tavern on the Green hosted by Thomas Klestil, the Austrian Ambassador to the United States, and attended by 80 distinguished guests. I invited him to demonstrate his techniques and his specialties for a considerably smaller audience.