What's happening in this picture?

At a recent Writers Connect meeting, we picked books off the nearby shelves of Nexus Art Cafe and found interesting pictures from which to base a short creative piece inside 10 minutes. Here's the picture I chose. I can't remember the book.

They say when you die, you return to earth. In 1956 in Minnesota, this certainly occurred to ten cars. The Chevvy's carburetta had blown, the replacement costs racking up more than the privilaged teen could shell out. The Lincoln's exhaust was, well, exhausted.

Paul Richards, a recent graduate of Arts from the University of Minnesota, pounced on the vehicles. He drove each of these to the edge of The Green Plains, an area of dangerous grassland on the edge of the city's green belt.

He was joined by bewildered journalists from the Minnesota Tribune, bulbs flashing as he tied down the accelerator pedal of the first vehicle. The car ploughed forward into the sodden earth, the engine cutting out, its nose burrowing out of sight.

“These cars,” he told the press, “are now resting with my brother. Will you report this now?”