Yet, the Queen's Chest gift shop in the Delta Queen Classic Car Wash on Hamilton Avenue in Campbell is equally as popular as the full-service car wash.

This unlikely pairing, which has inspired scores of imitators across the United States, is due to the shared vision of owners Frank and Marilyn Dorsa of Willow Glen.

It's a vision that dates back almost 40 years, when they bought their first car wash, renaming it Lark Avenue because of its location on that street in Los Gatos.

"When we bought it, they just gave us the keys and that was it," recalls Frank. "There were no gas pumps, no landscaping, no gift shops, no equipment. We washed the cars by hand and I had to learn the business right from scratch."

And he adds, "I soon had a sense of frustration with the industry, which was very low-class then. Women rarely wanted to go to a car wash. It was outdoors, cold, they were close to the workers. It wasn't a pleasant adventure."

Marilyn concurs. "When we opened Lark, I was going to San José State and cashiering on weekends. We worked together from ground zero."

They started renovating the existing car wash, adding landscaping, fuel service, new equipment, a waiting area with complimentary coffee and eventually the first gift shop.

Marilyn was by then a successful artist with frequent one-woman shows, including one at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga. She was becoming accustomed to selling her paintings and jewelry at galleries and occasional street fairs, including the then-fledging Fairglen Art Show in Willow Glen and the Los Gatos Wine and Art Festival.

"I wanted to feel independent," Marilyn recalls. "Remember Helen Reddy singing 'I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar'? That was my 'I Am Woman' period. I was teaching art, selling my art, selling my jewelry and I got a taste for retail, even though it was art-oriented.

"I decided one way I could express my independence was to go into retail, independent of Frank. I started investigating opening a shop, but I knew nothing about business. I was knowledgeable about art and music, but I was reinventing the wheel when it came to retail.

"Frank said, 'Why don't you start the whole thing at Lark and get your feet wet?' So, I started with plants from a vendor and outdoor pieces for the patio. But when we built the Delta Queen [in Campbell], I insisted on a retail room. I put my jewelry in there and a few art consignment pieces, and that was the beginning of the full-scale retail gift business."

With the experience gained at Lark Avenue, Frank started looking at a piece of property on Hamilton Avenue.

"That property was very, very unusual," he recalls. "It was a big L, back along the creek. It was like a leftover piece of property."

The story has been told many times, but both Frank and Marilyn swear that it's true that one night Frank sat up in bed and said, "I've got it. I'm going to build a riverboat."

Working with Los Gatos artist and building designer Rick Guidice, Frank came up with the paddle-wheel steamboat design that is now a Silicon Valley landmark. However, there was more than whimsy to the concept.

"Because it was a narrow piece of property, we had to put the support equipment on a second floor. If it was a square building, it would be ugly," Frank says. "We worked around that obstacle and came up with the Delta Queen. My main concern was that it not be flimsy, but that it be substantial."

While he was building it, Frank had a sign out in front advertising "The Delta Queen Opening Soon."

"I didn't say what it was, so as we were building it no one knew it would be a car wash. I'd left a space on the sign and about a month before we opened, I put the words 'car wash' in. A fellow in a big Cadillac drove by and yelled, 'You'll never make it!'

"I thought, my whole life savings, five years of hard work at Lark, we're in debt and it's going to be a failure."

Obviously it wasn't, with cars lined up on an almost-daily basis for the wash and hand-dried treatment. The opening even garnered national publicity. The Delta Queen turned 30 last year, and Lark Avenue will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year.

The Dorsas' second theme car wash came about in 1977 with the opening of Robertsville Corners at Cherry and Almaden Expressway. The front is a Victorian-style structure, with barn structures to the side and back.

Also designed with Guidice, it pays tribute to the heritage of both the Dorsas and Santa Clara Valley. Franks recalls "cutting cots" each summer at his Mirassou cousins' ranch, and Marilyn grew up on a prune ranch on Chynoweth, across from the Hayes Mansion. The corner where Robertsville now sits is where Marilyn's father stopped for gas on trips from their ranch to the dehydrating plant.

That their car wash and gift businesses are successful comes as no surprise to anyone who knows Frank or Marilyn Dorsa.

Both are San Jose natives, and their mothers even had the same obstetrician.

Frank started young working for his father, Frank Dorsa Sr., inventor of the Eggo waffle and co-founder of Eggo Food Products.

"In seventh grade I'd walk from St. Leo's after school to Julian to work at the Eggo Plant. I'd load trucks and we'd come home together. Because my father worked such long hours, it was a way for me to spend time with him," Frank recalls.

He continued working with his father until he was close to graduating from Bellarmine. While driving from the family home in Willow Glen to Bellarmine, he'd pass Emery's on the corner of Meridian and San Carlos. At the time, the store sold lawn mowers and other equipment. A street sweeper parked there caught Frank's eye.

"My father had always been an entrepreneur, and I wanted to go into business for myself," Franks says. "At that time, in the late '50s, the shopping centers of the Valley were just being built. Town and Country (now the site of Santana Row) and Valley Fair were being built and there was a big need for power sweeping of parking lots.

"I started the company and I'd be sweeping at night, selling accounts during the day, going to Santa Clara University, and toward the end of college I got married, I was running the sweeping business and I was in the Marine Corps Reserves. It was pretty tough."

While Frank was honing his business skills, Marilyn enjoyed two careers. As a youngster, she started singing professionally, appearing on the popular local television show Hoffman Hayride and then in places like Las Vegas. Now she sings solely for friends and her own pleasure.

At Notre Dame High School and then San José State, she devoted her talents to art.

In addition to teaching as well as producing art, Marilyn was active with local art groups, including the San Jose Art League. She was among the founding group for the San Jose Museum of Art, and when her son Bart was a student at Santa Clara University, she served on the board of DeSaisset Museum.

Both are also active in the community, supporting the American Cancer Society through the Cattle Baron's Ball. Marilyn has designed Christmas trees for Valle Monte League as well as table settings for the VIP League and Junior League of San Jose.

In addition to their Willow Glen home, they have a vineyard and second home in Los Gatos they've named La Rusticana. The gift stores carry their wine.

The Classic Car Wash businesses are a melding of their talents, they say.

Frank points out that it takes a certain mind-set to operate a car wash, including knowing how to deal with labor, equipment, production and customer satisfaction.

"People in the car-wash business are industrially motivated," agrees Marilyn. "They are men who are into equipment and the nuts and bolts of the operation, the bottom line. They don't have a clue when it comes to gifts.

"Frank is the industrial motivation and I'm the creative. We have a working marriage and a working partnership. I've never seen it successful anywhere else."

The formula that the Dorsas came up with resulted in a period of franchising. At one point they had 32 franchises nationwide, but they sold them off and now concentrate on the four they own locally.

When asked what aspect of the business he most enjoys, Frank doesn't hesitate to say, "My employees. I respect them, and what we have in common is roots. My father didn't speak English until he went to grammar school, and my grandparents didn't speak any English at all.

"My grandparents started pruning and worked their way up, and my father worked his way up into a national company. These employees are doing the same thing a generation or two later," he says of his mostly Hispanic workforce. "They're hard-working, they're polite, they're honest and they are my dear friends."

Of the four car washes, three have gift stores. The Westgate Classic Car Wash on Prospect in Saratoga does not.

Marilyn says she takes many things into consideration when she buys. Marilyn remains executive buyer and Patty Chase is her main buyer.

"It has to be impulse buying. Usually an item will speak to us, and if something appeals, we'll buy a small amount and test it in one of the stores. We have to check demographics constantly and I watch the sales report, but you can't follow the numbers only.

"I always push to include innovative, stylish, forward-thinking merchandise along with the things that are regular sellers. I don't want our stores to look like every other gift shop. It doesn't interest me to be in the gift business and do it in a mundane way. Why bother?"

Marilyn says she has no set price ceiling and often finds that items priced under $20 sell as well as items priced under $100. She keeps her prices "as low as I possibly can in a small business" and pays particular attention to any customer feedback she hears directly or that is reported back to her by the sales staff.

"If you lose the human contact, you lose the soul of merchandising. It's more of a gamble and you don't make as much money, but you end up with a class act."

Perhaps the highest class of merchandise carried in the Queen's Chest gift stores are the designs of Marilyn herself.

A jewelry collector and connoisseur, Marilyn has designed jewelry since childhood. Her lost-wax castings incorporating emerald and ruby crystals were featured in the national magazine Lapidary Journal in the mid-1970s. In the past year and a half she has been working with Murano glass beads, creating bracelets and necklaces. Initially, she made them for herself and friends, but found strangers stopping her and asking where they could buy one.

She went into production of her designs with one employee and some local subcontractors. Now she can't keep up with the demand.

One yardstick of design success is that her jewelry is featured in this year's Neiman Marcus Christmas Book. Alongside this year's "His & Hers" gifts of multifunction robots, the legendary catalog offers three of Marilyn's heart-motif-style bracelets, priced at $295 each.

Savvy shoppers already know they will find similar styles starting at about $110 at the Queen's Chest shops, although Marilyn is quick to point out that while they are similar, they are not the same.

"Those pieces are exclusive to Neiman's. The pieces I sold to them are not available in my stores or any other stores," she says.

Along with the jewelry, shoppers will find plenty of special merchandise for the holidays at the Queen's Chest stores.

Marilyn admits that the holidays are as important to her as they are to any other retailer, but she's in a unique position, however, when it comes to the effect weather has on her business: it's a key factor.

"When it rains, we're singing the blues," she says.

Yet no matter what the forecast, Marilyn says, "This year, we've concentrated on things that are seasonally appropriate, entertaining items and things that can translate throughout the year."