The VAX is a classic computer architecture from the 1970ies, and as it was in wide spread use until Intel took over the world, there were a number of LISP implementations for it. VAX LISP was the offering from Digital Equipment, the producer of the VAX, and being a long term VAX fan boy, I had to give it a good workout when I finally got my hands on it. Join me for a short excursion into the past, when compilers were licensed as binary and before Common Lisp became the contender of Smalltalk, C++ and Java - And it lost.