I was organizing a closet today and found more jigsaw puzzles than you could shake a stick at. After years of hearing my mother use that expression and occasionally using it myself it occurred to me to wonder why you would want to shake a stick at things and where the it comes from.
Any opinions out there? (silly question I know)

here's more explanations than you can shake a stick at
-joe (idiomatically speaking) friday

Hmmm. All of them with big question marks at the end. Seems everyone else is as vague as I feel today.