On Feb. 15, 1975, at exactly 4:30 p.m., a man in an orange Corvette spotted a beautiful woman in a blue Mercedes outside the Galleria.

It was apparently love at first sight. How do we know?

He placed a classified ad in the Houston Chronicle reaching out to that "beautiful blonde."

Missed connections like these happen. Best thing anyone could do back then -- short of taking out an ad on a billboard -- was to place an ad like this in the newspaper and hope they see it.

I was looking up something from February 1975 when I came across the “Personal Notices” section of the classifieds. What I found was a funny, and at times poignant, look at "shout-outs" and how we reached out to the unreachable in the pre-Internet era

“WOODROW: Please Call Leroy soon as Possible”

It’s easy to forget just how hard it could be to reach some people before we all had cell phones. Here, someone unable to get a hold of Woodrow by telephone, or even by letter, has resorted to taking out an ad. Who knows what Leroy wanted.

“REWARD of tender loving care for the return of my sweet wife … & wonderful son … Bill.”

Bill, in a bit of poetic license, has used lingo commonly found in the “Lost Pets” section of the classifieds in an effort to put his family back together.

I wonder if the people in these ads found what they were looking for. Did the "Female country & western singer" find stardom? Did someone purchase that ticket to the Led Zeppelin show at the Coliseum? For all we know, Blue Mercedes Woman saw this ad in the Chronicle and reached out to Orange Corvette Guy. Maybe they got married and are now grandparents living happily ever after.

Then again, maybe she read the Houston Post.

J.R. Gonzales, a third-generation Houstonian, covers local history with an eye toward the people and events that have mostly been forgotten to time. Follow him through Bayou City History on Facebook and Twitter. He can be reached at 713-362-6163 or john.gonzales@chron.com.