January 27, 1983

''I feel like Nathan Hale - I regret that I have but one wife to give to my country's infrastructure.

The Administration calls its proposal for a three-year tax increase of some $135 billion a standby measure, an insurance policy to be used only if the nation's soaring budget deficits are not substantially reduced by mid-1985. President Reagan proposed the tax increase in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. Under the proposal, the Government would impose a surcharge on personal and corporate incomes and an excise tax of about $5 a barrel on oil. The taxes would not take effect unless a number of conditions were met, including a projected deficit for the fiscal year 1986 exceeding 2 1/2 percent of gross national product. The Administration's current projections, however, indicate that it considers it most unlikely that the standby taxes can be avoided. Even assuming a very strong recovery, one that would produce real economic growth substantially higher than the 3.5 percent average for the postwar years, the deficit would not be reduced enough to avoid the added taxes.

Married, the father of a 3-year-old girl and the president of the local bar association, Kenneth C. Gon,calves lived in a country so small and remote that he liked to say that although this was not the end of the world you could see it from here. Content in being isolated from the rest of the continent by its language, the jungle that covers 90 percent of its surface and a time clock setting that keeps it at a half-hour variance with its Latin neighbors, this former Dutch colony developed along peaceful lines. A major sports competition here centers on Sunday morning warbling contests on the town green between trained songbirds. And militants in a military coup here in 1980 directed their attacks at bureaucratic pocket-lining, untidy streets and dirt paths in need of raking. Then, with a fury, the violence of political life elsewhere in Central and South America caught up with tiny Suriname last month. Mr. Gon,calves and 14 other men, all of whom were reportedly unhappy with the growing ties the Government had with Cuba and other leftist regimes in the region, were taken from their beds and killed.

In an ever-changing city, one thing that New Yorkers hate to lose is their bus stop. Move it a block or simply switch it to another corner and people get disoriented. After all, bus riders don't pay much attention to street signs - they board in front of a familiar supermarket or get off across from the neighborhood library. And so, when a proposal was advanced three years ago to eliminate more than 100 of the 2,100 bus stops in the Bronx, it was met with a hearty Bronx cheer. The plan encountered so much opposition, in fact, that when a major portion of it goes into effect on Monday, only a dozen stops will be eliminated.

Once again, troubles are piling up for the trucking industry. Tonnage and revenues are down because of the recession. Scores of truckers, caught in rate wars following deregulation of the industry, have gone bankrupt. Washington has just imposed a new series of tax increases on truck fuel, truck parts, truck use and truck sales. And once again, as they did twice in the last decade, the nation's 100,000 independent truckers - who haul 90 percent of the nation's fresh food and half of its steel - are threatening to strike. This time their aim is to persuade Congress to provide some relief from the new taxes. The stoppage is scheduled next Monday. No one knows how many of the independents - drivers who own their own tractors but generally haul trailers provided by someone else - will heed the strike call or how many other drivers will honor the stoppage if it comes. But there appears to be wide support for some sort of action.