What was going on when I was born?

Stafford Township, a rural community of 11,000 people near the New Jersey shore, has two Mayors these days. And that has created no end of problems. One day in mid-January, for instance, the first Mayor to reach the Township Hall, Wesley K. Bell, dismissed the township's administrator and clerk, solicitor, auditor and engineer with directives at 8:31 A.M., 8:33, 8:34 and 8:50. The deposed officials had been appointed by his rival, Carl W. Block. Mr. Block has held office since Mr. Bell was unseated in a disputed recall election Dec. 6, 1983.

President Reagan's military budget calls for a surge of new spending on nuclear weapons and space research with the aim of giving the United States a strong bargaining position in talks with the Soviet Union on arms control, according to budget documents prepared by the Pentagon. The $313.7 billion budget would nearly triple spending on the antimissile space weapons research program, to $3.7 billion, and includes a stepped-up $4 billion program for more MX missiles. These and other proposals are ''vital to the success of genuine arms reductions,'' according to the Pentagon. The documents, including details of the military proposals, were prepared as briefing papers for members of Congress and were intended for public release Monday. They were obtained from Congressional sources.

The chief executive of a major West German manufacturer of engines and turbines for the military was shot and killed today by two assailants who came to the door of his home outside Munich. The terrorist group known as the Red Army Faction took responsibility. The killing of the businessman, Ernst Zimmermann, the 55-year-old chief executive of the giant Motoren und Turbinen Union M"unchen G.m.b.H., appeared to mark an increase in a terrorist offensive that the group began in December. At the same time, according to officials here, the slaying seemed to fit an emerging pattern of coordination among a scattering of small, underground terrorist groups in several Western European countries.

A group of 13 industrialized nations and the World Bank today pledged more than a billion dollars to establish a new fund for long-term economic help to African nations suffering from famine and economic collapse. Officials here said the purpose of the fund, the Special Facility for Sub-Saharan Africa, is to make famines in Africa less likely. The fund is distinct from the emergency food supplies that Western nations are now sending to famine-stricken parts of the continent. All Technically Eligible Under the terms of the fund, all African countries are technically eligible for assistance, including those, like Ethiopia and the Sudan, that have been receiving substantial famine-relief supplies from the West.

The budget President Reagan will send to Congress next Monday shows the deficit declining to $144.4 billion in the fiscal year 1988, far short of the Administration's target of $100 billion, according to budget documents obtained today. The documents show $47.5 billion worth of reductions in projected spending for the fiscal year 1986, starting Oct. 1. Of these, $38.8 billion, or nearly 82 percent, is in domestic programs and $8.7 billion is in the President's military budget, according to the documents. The proposed savings in nonmilitary programs in 1986 are reductions from what spending would be if such programs were increased only by the rate of inflation and by the expected caseload growth for benefit programs. Savings Short of $50 Billion Even with the savings in the military budget in 1986, Pentagon spending next year would still increase $30 billion above 1985. But nonmilitary spending, excluding interest on the national debt, will decline by just over $30 billion.

The Reagan Administration, bowing to demands of farm state congressmen, agreed today to make it easier for farmers to obtain Federal help in reducing their debts and avoiding default. The Government said it would guarantee a bank the payment of most tof a farmer's loan if the bank was willing to reduce interest rates on the loan to help the farmer avoid default. The budget director, David A. Stockman, and Agriculture Secretary John R. Block promised to put the change into effect early next week, making debt-relief terms more liberal than they have been since last fall. The commitment was made this morning at a meeting attended by Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader; several Middle Western senators, and the presidents of state Farm Bureau organizations in the Midwest.

The Reagan Administration is exploring the possibility of encouraging Nicaraguan rebel groups to form an umbrella organization that could openly receive aid from the United States, according to a well-placed official on Capitol Hill. The groups might meet soon, perhaps as early as this weekend in Miami, to discuss the idea, the official said. The new political organization could resolve a problem that has been vexing the Administration since Congress voted last year to halt further distribution of covert aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. Congress did allocate $14 million for the rebels in the current fiscal year, but said it could not be released unless Congress specifically voted to do so after the end of this month.

At 6:30 this morning, the crowds had already started to gather in this slum neighborhood on the edge of the Ecuadorean city of Guayaquil. Some of them passed by the two trucks bearing drinkable water, one of the few things the people of this neighborhood are asking for, along with police protection and, for the unemployed, a chance to work. The people were coming to hear Pope John Paul II speak about Jesus and the poor, and these were John Paul's people: poor, devout, hardworking, believing that this Pope might really be able to change things. ''This visit is very good for us,'' said Luis Ortiz, who was climbing up an unfinished cinderblock house with his wife and two children for a better view of the Pope.

Pope John Paul II arrived this evening to begin his mission to the divided Peruvian Roman Catholic Church and delivered a pointed warning against unorthodoxy and ''passing ideologies.'' ''Faithfulness is proof of love,'' the Pope told a group of priests and nuns here tonight. ''Therefore, you must avoid everything that would convey the thought that there exists in the church a double hierarchy or a double magisterium.''

The South African authorities announced today that they were temporarily halting the relocation of black people living in areas deemed to be for whites only. They said policies affecting the practice were under review. But, at a news conference, Gerrit Viljoen, the Cabinet minister responsible for the destiny of many black people living within South Africa's traditional frontiers, seemed to qualify the moratorium by saying that if black communities agreed to be relocated, ''further removals can take place while the review is under way.'' He said the review did not affect communities of what are deemed to be unlawful squatters, which will still be liable to removal.

Guerrillas shot and killed a part-time soldier today as he sat in a school bus waiting to take children swimming.

Elvia Cosme Hernandez describes herself in a soft voice as a typical mother of two young children, except that, she says, her husband, sister, uncle and cousin were either killed by Salvadoran Government security forces or made to ''disappear.'' Their uninvestigated deaths four years ago, Mrs. Hernandez says, led her to join the Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Political Prisoners, Disappeared and Murdered, a vocal group of Salvadoran women who say their loved ones were killed for political reasons. ''I joined because it was necessary to denounce this violation,'' Mrs. Hernandez, 31 years old, said in a recent interview. ''If we don't denounce it, it will go on.''